Winless Avalanche offer welcome change of opponent for Bruins

The Boston Bruins have had a solid start to this season -- as long as they're not playing the Florida Panthers.

Boston is 2-2-0 after four games and the two losses have come against the reigning Stanley Cup champions. Florida is off the regular-season schedule until January, but the Bruins are facing a desperate team when they play at the Colorado Avalanche on Wednesday night.

Boston is coming off a 4-3 home loss to the Panthers on Monday afternoon and kicks off a three-game road trip in Denver. Despite the loss to Florida, the Bruins had some positives -- mainly the solid play from their bottom-six forwards.

The fourth line was involved in all three goals, two of which were scored by defensemen. David Pastrnak had his three-game goal streak ended, but captain Brad Marchand was pleased with the contribution Boston got from the fourth line.

"They've been unbelievable," Marchand said. "It's great to see the way that they compete and bring it every night, and the rest of us need to take a page out of their book and be a lot better. But they're definitely carrying the weight right now."

The Bruins were happy to get out of Monday's physical game without serious injury. Pastrnak was hit hard from behind by former teammate A.J. Greer, and Pavel Zacha dropped the gloves with Greer in defense of Pastrnak.

"Pasta (Pastrnak) got hit," Bruins coach Jim Montgomery told reporters. "And I love, I love what Pav (Zacha) did. He went in, defended him. That's great."

Boston might be in for another physical game against the struggling Avalanche. Colorado has lost its first three games and has given up 20 goals, including three empty-netters, in the losses.

"Obviously, you don't want it to be right at the start coming off camp, but at the same (time), when we won (the Stanley Cup in 2022), the last two years, we've gone through stints (like this)," defenseman Cale Makar said. "The world seems like it is falling on top of you, but at the end of the day, you're going to find a way out of it.

"We definitely can't get down on ourselves. We just have to win the next one. That's all we're focused on."

Goaltender Alexandar Georgiev has struggled, but despite allowing five goals on 36 shots in Monday night's 6-2 loss to the New York Islanders, he played his best game to date. It was the play in front of him that was an issue.

"I thought that was the worst defensive game of the three by a mile," coach Jared Bednar said. "It looked like we were cheating the game. If you're going to cheat it for offense, then things aren't going to look good defensively."

Colorado is missing four of its top-six forwards and played Monday without Makar's defensive partner, Devon Toews (lower-body injury). Gabe Landeskog (knee), Artturi Lehkonen (shoulder) and Valeri Nichushkin (suspension) have yet to play this season.

Bednar said he expects Toews to play Wednesday, but Jonathan Drouin has been out since the season opener with an upper-body injury and it is uncertain when he will return.