As the clock was winding down on Sunday night at the TD Garden, tempers were flaring up between the Boston Bruins and Ottawa Senators. With just over a minute remaining in the Senators’ 6-2 victory, Ottawa gooned things up. Captain Brady Tkachuk, who only acts tough from the bench, and when officials step in between him and another player, was running his mouth at David Pastrnak.

First of all, the question has to be asked why Pastrnak was out there chasing four goals with a minute left. Anyway, Ottawa’s Nick Jensen slew-footed Pastrnak with a cheap shot, and that was after another tough guy, Dylan Cozens, kneed Nikita Zadorov. Of course, Cozens is another phony tough guy and didn’t answer to the hit and instead hiding behind a referee. When the dust settled, Mark Kastelic and Tanner Jeannot stood up for their teammates, which was something head coach Marco Sturm liked seeing.

“We had two guys, Jeannot and Kast, and they stood up for the team. And these guys, clearly, you could see they were not afraid of us. And we can’t expect having just the same two guys doing the job over and over again,” said Sturm. “And it has nothing to do with fighting. It’s just playing hard and showing me a little bit, fighting a little bit back. That’s hard. That was missing. It was a little bit disappointing. I was pissed off, too, because it’s a bad feeling.”

As fake as Ottawa was at the end of the game, you can’t deny how they dominated the Bruins in 2025-26. That was the final game of the season between the Atlantic Division foes, and the Senators went 3-0-1. It was pure domination in three of the four games. If this doesn’t serve as a wake-up call for the Black and Gold, I don’t know what will.

Viktor Arvidsson injury update

According to Steve Conroy of the Boston Herald, Sturm said that there was a chance that Viktor Arvidsson could return against the Montreal Canadiens on Tuesday night. It is a small chance, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see Sturm and the Bruins take the cautious approach and hold him out until after the holiday break.

Joonas Korpisalo pulled vs. Senators

It was a rough night between the pipes for goalie Joonas Korpisalo against Ottawa. He allowed three first-period goals and then two 19 seconds apart in the second period before he was pulled in favor of Jeremy Swayman.

“You never want to get pulled,” Korpisalo said. “Doesn’t matter what happens. Today was one of those days, and obviously I’m not happy (with) how I played. We’ve just got to get back to our identity. Battle hard, play together. Bring back the energy. I don’t know if we had it today.”

Korpisalo didn’t get much support from his teammates in front of him, but there were a couple of goals that he would like to have back, and Boston needed saves on some of those shots. Are the Bruins facing a backup goaltending issue? Things could get interesting in the second half of the season.