The Boston Bruins suffered a tough 6-4 loss to the Florida Panthers on Tuesday night, as the Panthers celebrated raising their first-ever Stanley Cup championship banner at Amerant Bank Arena.

Although the Bruins managed to narrow the score late in the game, they trailed for most of the night, having been outshot and outworked. A subpar performance from starting goaltender Joonas Korpisalo also contributed to the defeat.

Afterward, head coach Jim Montgomery didn't hold back in his assessment of the team's performance. He criticized Boston's lack of execution and remarked that his team looked “slow” throughout the entire game, via NESN:

“Their execution was really good, our execution was really poor,” Jim Montgomery told reporters. “I can’t pinpoint why we looked so slow, but we looked slow the entire game, not just the first 10 minutes, in my opinion.”

Montgomery also defended Korpisalo while saying that the Bruins players in front of him hung him out to dry.

“Korpisalo was not the problem tonight, it was the people in front of him,” Montgomery said. “You can’t give up four backdoor tip-ins and expect your goalie to make save after save. He made a lot of saves on breakaways. He was good tonight. The players in front of him, the rest of the team and the coaching staff, we weren’t good enough.”

Korpisalo was in his first regular season game with Boston since being acquired from the Ottawa Senators over the summer in exchange for Linus Ullmark.

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For the first time in five years, the Bruins lost their season opener

Florida Panthers and Boston Bruins players fight during the third period at Amerant Bank Arena.
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Tuesday night's game marked the first time in five seasons that the Bruins didn't start a regular season campaign by winning their first contest of the year; the fact that they surrendered six goals won't sit well with fans.

But according to first-year Bruins defenseman Nikita Zadorov, it's nothing to worry about and the team will be fine in the long term, via NESN:

“It’s the first game,” Zadorov said. “There’s a lot of new faces. Emotions, obviously, the history and the past against that team, so I feel the focus level wasn’t there a little bit today. But it’s Game 1 out of 82 games; we’re gonna get used to each other. We’re going to be fine.”

The Bruins will face the historic Original Six and division rival Montreal Canadiens on home ice at TD Garden on Thursday night; puck drop is scheduled for 7:00 PM EST.