BOSTON — Three seconds into Tuesday’s game, Tanner Jeannot fought Josh Anderson. The Montreal Canadiens forward is 6-foot-3 and 226 pounds. He is not an easy man to stare down.
Fighting such juggernauts is part of Jeannot’s job. Two nights earlier, the Boston Bruins wing took on Kurtis MacDermid, the Ottawa Senators’ 6-foot-5, 233-pound monster.
On Tuesday, at the conclusion of a long and painful fight, Jeannot scored the takedown on Anderson. The fans at TD Garden let Jeannot know how much they appreciated his action.
“Some guys on the bench said it was the loudest they’ve heard the building,” said Alex Steeves.
“HE FLOORED ‘EM WITH A RIGHT HAND!” 👊
JEANNOT KNOWS HOW TO GET TD GARDEN ON ITS FEET 🔊 🔊 🔊 pic.twitter.com/gUhWTJG1fT
— NESN (@NESN) December 24, 2025
The shame of the situation is that 26 seconds after Jeannot’s fight, Hampus Lindholm was called for holding. The air came out of the rink.
The Bruins lost on Tuesday, 6-2. It is not hard to see why.
They gave the Canadiens 12:00 of power-play time, including a pair of two-man advantages. Montreal scored on both of the five-on-three power plays. They have too much skill not to.
The Bruins have a league-high 158 minor penalties. They have been short-handed for 227:31, also the most in the NHL.
You can play with matches only so many times before you get burned.
“You can show them. You can talk about it,” coach Marco Sturm said of his players’ season-long undisciplined play. “We’ve addressed it many, many times before. It’s up to the players, too, a little bit. You have to be careful. You have to know when to use your stick and maybe not. There’s a lot more to it. But it comes down to that. Everybody has to ask themselves, do they have to take that penalty or not? Those are big deals because it could cost us games, points. Those kinds of points, we need at the end of the year.”
It wasn’t just Jeannot’s fight that went to waste. At 8:28 of the first period, with the score 0-0, Nikita Zadorov and Arber Xhekaj agreed to a fight off a faceoff in the Bruins’ zone. They had the showmanship to leave the end and skate slowly to center ice, shedding their gloves and sticks en route, for a proper showdown.
By the end, both fighters had lost their helmets. The fight was that ferocious.
“These guys have been awesome all season long,” David Pastrnak said of Zadorov and Jeannot. “They’re showing it. They’re playing well. They’ve got bigger roles. They’re in it every night. So it’s easy to get into the game when you have guys like this. They’re amazing guys and teammates. We’re lucky to have them.”
HEAVYWEIGHT BOUT IN BOSTON 🥊
ALL EYES ON NIKITA ZADOROV AND ARBER XHEKAJ AT CENTRE ICE 🍿 pic.twitter.com/GOnBHqgsc9
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) December 24, 2025
Perhaps the inspiration of watching Jeannot and Zadorov handle the rough stuff turned the dial too high for the Bruins to overcome. Even the coaching staff was in the middle of the penalty trouble.
In the third period, Zadorov’s stick broke during a clearing attempt. The Canadiens roared the other way. Jeremy Swayman kicked out Nick Suzuki’s close-range bid. Zachary Bolduc scored on the rebound to give the Canadiens a 3-2 lead.
The Bruins challenged the play for goalie interference. They believed Swayman was not given a chance to play Bolduc’s shot after Suzuki collided with the goalie. It didn’t take referees Brandon Blandina and Furman South long to uphold their good-goal call.
At the end of the second, Sturm decided not to challenge a waved-off Elias Lindholm goal. The referees had ruled that Pastrnak had pushed his stick into Jacob Fowler’s pads, preventing the goalie from playing Lindholm’s shot.
“Yes and no,” Sturm answered when asked if challenging Bolduc’s goal was a gamble. “All the challenges, I feel like if you look around the league and even with us with two today, you just sometimes never know. Looking back afterwards, could we have made a different call on one of those? Maybe. But those are split seconds. Sometimes you have to make a decision right away.”
The Bruins were called for a delay of game because of the failed challenge. They killed 1:20 of the power play, but then Jeannot was called for cross-checking Bolduc — a call Sturm classified as soft.
Cole Caufield scored during the five-on-three, giving Montreal a 4-2 lead. Fifteen seconds later, Hampus Lindholm was sent off for tripping. The Canadiens were on a five-on-three once more. This time, Suzuki scored.
“If you’re going into a battle, you’ve got to know where your stick is,” Viktor Arvidsson said. “You’ve got to know where your body is. If you can’t get the puck, you might have to re-route and try to get it another way. I think we’re taking too many stupid ones.”
The Bruins lost two straight games to division rivals by 6-2 scores. They finished their five-game homestand with a 1-3-1 record. Their next five games are on the road.
Given the tightness of the Eastern Conference standings, they cannot afford to keep leaking oil.
“It’s not going to become any easier,” Pastrnak said. “It’s a long stretch of a lot of games. We have a really tough road trip coming up. We didn’t get it done at home. So we have to do it on the road.”