Marco Sturm wasn't buying any moral victories Tuesday night, even with Jeremy Swayman keeping the Bruins within one goal of Carolina.

Boston fell 2-1 to the Hurricanes. The head coach pointed straight at the turnovers and a lack of patience from some of his players.

His bigger point stung more. Sturm believes his team could have walked out of Carolina with at least a point against a 10-2-2 club sitting first overall.

And Sturm has this one right. Boston managed only 15 shots on Pyotr Kochetkov all night, and the Carolina goalie stopped 14 of them.

Fifteen shots. That's a jarring total for a team averaging 3.8 goals a night and carrying a +21 goal differential through 13 games.

Sixty minutes with that little pressure is the hockey version of circling a packed mall lot on a Saturday. Lots of motion, no parking spot.

Pavel Zacha scored Boston's only goal, set up by David Pastrnak and Elias Lindholm. The club's leading scorer still finished the night at minus-2.

Jeremy Swayman deserved better, and St. Louis is next

Swayman did his part. He turned aside 28 of 30 shots and gave a flat offensive night a chance it frankly hadn't earned.

Sebastian Aho beat him for the winner, one of five shots the Hurricanes forward put on goal. Jackson Blake scored the other Carolina goal.

Discipline didn't help. Tanner Jeannot piled up seven penalty minutes while playing just 8:41, a bottom-six night that ended with more time in the box than anyone wanted.

Charlie McAvoy carried the heaviest load of any Boston skater, logging 26:32 on the blue line. Even that workload couldn't drag the offense into gear.

So where does that leave Boston? Still first in its division at 9-3-1, with a 7-2-1 run over the last 10 that looks a lot better than Tuesday felt.

But Carolina has 22 points and a 7-1-1 road record. That's the measuring stick, and the Bruins came up short in the first look at it.

This was the first of three meetings between the clubs this season. The next one comes December 13, back in Carolina.

The Bruins don't get long to stew. They visit St. Louis on Thursday to close out the road trip before returning home to face Chicago.

The Blues have dropped two straight and were blanked by the Canadiens on Tuesday. On paper, it's the kind of opponent that hands out chances.

A coach can only say it so many times, though. If the puck keeps going the other way in St. Louis, Sturm's next message might not come from the podium.