Through nearly the first half of the 2025-26 season, first-year Boston Bruins coach Marco Sturm always seems to push the right buttons. Whether it’s scratching a player to send a message or making lineup decisions, he seems to make the right decisions that end up working out over time.

After winning two out of three games on the road earlier this month, the Black and Gold returned home for a pivotal five-game homestand ahead of the holiday break. Boston is facing a tough five-game road trip after the break, which made the five games at home big in terms of banking points for the standings in the tight Eastern Conference playoff race.

What was a big homestand turned into a complete disaster after they went 1-3-1 with four straight losses, all to Canadian teams, after beating the Utah Mammoth, 4-1, on Dec. 16 to open the stretch of games at the TD Garden. It was a frustrating final four games, but nobody is to blame for the results more than Sturm.

Marco Sturm’s decision making cost Bruins in five-game homestand

Sturm has got a lot of positive reviews from players and fans, but what happened over the last week falls on his shoulders. It started on Saturday night in a 5-4 shootout loss to the Vancouver Canucks. He started Jeremy Swayman in goal for the fourth straight game in six nights. He wasn’t himself and allowed Vancouver to score weak goals, which forced overtime. Then, in the shootout, Sturm had maybe his biggest head-scratching decisions in the shootout.

Vancouver shot first and with it scoreless in the fourth round, Sturm sent defenseman Andrew Peeke out to win the game, but his feeble attempt failed. Why Peeke, of all people?

“We practice all the time,” Sturm said. “He does one move, and he did it really well. Not just once, a few times. I thought he was going to do it again, and he didn’t. So that’s why I picked him. So that’s on me.”

Yikes. If that wasn’t bad enough, next out was Mikey Eyssimont. Of course, you can imagine how that went. If that didn’t open some eyes, how about David Pastrnak being on the ice with a minute left in a 6-2 loss to the Ottawa Senators? He was chirped by Brady Tkachuck, who is tough from the bench, and when officials step in between him and other players, before being slew-footed and ending up fighting. What are we doing?

Finally, in Tuesday’s 6-2 beatdown by the Montreal Canadiens, he didn’t challenge an Elias Lindholm goal with 4.7 seconds left in the second period in a tie game. The goal was called for goaltender interference as the official deemed Pastrnak interfered with Jacob Fowler. Then, in the third period, he challenged a Montreal goal that really had no chance of getting overturned.

That led to a power play chasing a goal, and his undisciplined team took more penalties, which led to a pair of two-man advantage goals to blow the game open and seal a win for the Canadiens. Sturm has been making some great decisions this year, but he struggled mightily during the homestand, and some of the decisions completely backfired in what was a disastrous week.