BOSTON — Marco Sturm saw this one coming.

After an emotional win on Saturday at Montreal, the Bruins lacked the spark that had helped carry them to a 6-1-0 record in November entering Monday’s game against Carolina at TD Garden.

With several key players missing, he tried to rejigger the lines in hopes of finding a little magic, but nothing worked as the Bruins fell to the Hurricanes, 3-1.

“Even I felt it, I’ll be honest. It was an emotional night the other night in Montreal,” he said. “We felt it in the morning. We felt it before the game. It was just a slow day today, and I could see it in their eyes. We were just mentally, physically, not 100% today, that’s for sure.

“When you’re not sharp, you’re always kind of like a step behind,” he continued. “I feel like they jumped in front of us a lot of times. We were just late on everything and that was today the frustrating part. They didn’t do anything special.”

Boston will try to flip the switch back to on in California, where the Bruins will play three times to start their eight-day road trip that begins Wednesday in Anaheim.

The shot differential (Carolina 32-28) wasn’t nearly as large as it was during the Bruins’ earlier struggles, but Boston never felt like they were really in the game after falling behind. 2-0.

“They’re not all going to be at the Bell Centre on Hockey Night in Canada. But at the end of the day, they’re a very worthy opponent,” said Alex Steeves, who was called up last week. “Every game matters and we didn’t have enough emotion tonight.”

Some of it was unfamiliarity. The Bruins started three forwards who have spent more time in the AHL than the NHL this year, including two — Riley Tufte and Matej Blumel — playing for the first time since theor callup.

Injuries forced the Bruins to not only dress those players, but use them in key spots.

With the schedule condensed to allow for the Olympic break in February, everyone in the NHL is going to have quick turnarounds and lots of games crammed into short stretches.

“Everyone goes through the schedule like this,” Sturm said. “You got to stay mentally strong, though. We’re going to have a lot of games like that. It doesn’t matter at home or on the road. You got to find a way. The details matter.”

Sturm thought too many players on his team were content looking to the Bruins’ stars and veterans to pull them out of the funk.

“Some other guys have to step up too. You can’t always look at number 88 (David Pastrnak) and 91 (Nikita Zadorov) and 27 (Hampus Lindholm). You need other guys to step up as well, and I think that, that was a little bit missing there.”

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