As the Bruins licked their psychological wounds on an unscheduled day off in Philadelphia on Friday, a panicked Black and Gold nation had to think about how this team can get out of this spiral before it becomes a death spiral for the season.

It is said that even if training was scheduled, it was felt that with three matches in four days in three different cities, rested legs would be more productive than training. With the team’s performance staff having a lot of influence these days, the team drops practices fairly regularly, especially on the road.

But given the situation, after an embarrassing 8-2 loss at Carolina on Thursday and an anemic shutout loss to the Flyers on Tuesday, you can understand the alarm.

The first month of the season was 4-6-1 and, frankly, they haven’t been as good as that record indicates. They only have two regulation wins, at Colorado and against Montreal – and they had to avoid late trades to get them. They are 25th in goals (2.64, tied with the still-rebuilding Blackhawks) and 28th in goals against (3.82, just a hair better than the Sharks). They are 28th in high-danger scoring chances.

You all have the right to panic.

The knee-jerk reaction, of course, is to whip the coach. And make no mistake, Jim Montgomery – allowed by B management to start the season without a contract extension, which is generally not a recipe for success – must be feeling the heat. Nothing he tried — including drastic line changes that could prevent the gong show in Raleigh — worked.

Maybe having a coach with more contract security would have helped in the first month of the season, maybe not. It’s not really an NHL coach’s job to teach an NHL player how to make a 10-foot pass uncontested or how to throw the puck deep for a line change.

But these seemingly simple tasks are not carried out consistently. These eyes can’t remember when a Bruins team suffered from such a case of team-wide yapping with the puck.

And it starts at the top of the pay scale. David Pastrnak is 5-on-5 this season. Charlie McAvoy (2-1-3, minus-4) struggled on the top power play unit and was replaced by second-year pro Mason Lohrei, who didn’t have much more success. Charlie Coyle, coming off a career season, has one goal and no assists and is minus-9, tied for the team low with Trent Frederic (1-2-3 totals) . Brad Marchand showed a glimmer of his old self early in the blowout loss in Carolina and leads the league in drawn penalties, but he was also part of the power play failures.

General manager Don Sweeney’s big signings also didn’t provide the expected punch. Elias Lindholm, named among other things as Pastrnak’s setup man, ended a seven-game scoreless streak in Carolina with an assist on Marchand’s 5-on-3 goal, but his lack of chemistry with Pastrnak led Montgomery to part ways, which is understandable. this tandem. And Nikita Zadorov leads the league in minor penalties with nine.

All of these subpar performances made the expected growing pains of promising young players Matt Poitras and Lohrei even more glaring.

So can they get away with it without resorting to the old reliable NHL tactic of giving the head coach his walking papers?

That remains to be seen. When this possibility begins to be discussed in the public domain, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. But this weekend, with a rematch against the Flyers in Philadelphia on Saturday and then a home game against the .500 Seattle Kraken on Sunday at the Garden, is crucial. These are two beatable teams.

And it would be nice if Sweeney could soon sign veteran Tyler Johnson, who has been training with the team for a month and a half now since arriving at training camp for a tryout, before a decision was made on the ‘coach. Johnson wouldn’t replace the top six forwards they’re still missing, but he would add some speed, veteran feel and help on the power play. A well-timed power goal could have changed the outcome of a few of their losses.

But ultimately, it will be up to the permanent, underachieving veterans to turn things around. Easier said than done. If it was easy for them to stray from their path in their current state of mind, it would have been easy already.