Hockey is not a difficult game. Stay out of the penalty box, capitalize on your scoring chances, make the saves you’re supposed to and be smart with the puck. All of those are recipes for success.

Unfortunately for the Boston Bruins, not much was cooking Tuesday night.

Despite some signs of promise and “potential,” there hasn’t been much good cooking for the 2015-16 Bruins.

“Well, you know, I’m gonna be honest. I was excited about the potential, and I think there’s reason to be excited about the potential because we’ve seen it,” a visibly angry Claude Julien said following the Bruins 5-4 loss to the San Jose Sharks Tuesday night. “But [I’m] disappointed in the fact that you never know what you’re gonna get from either period to period or game to game. That’s the disappointing part right now.”

Just 42 seconds into their first of two games against the Sharks this season, the Bruins’ sloppiness with the puck in their own zone led to Joe Pavelski’s first of three points on the night.

The Bruins would respond nicely, scoring the game’s next two goals, but more sloppy play, especially in their own end, led to the loss.

“Sloppy tonight, sloppy. Really that’s the only word I can find right now,” Julien added. “Mistakes that, again, guys should know better.

“So is it focus? Is it trying to do too much? I think we really need to prepare ourselves better for games and know what we have to do in our defensive zone.”

Through 17 games, it’s been one crazy of a roller coaster ride. A case of one step forward and two steps backwards seems to be haunting the Bruins.

“We keep taking steps forward, then kind of taking two back. It’s always you’re kind of very high after a win, you feel good about yourself, but then I don’t think we can feel very good after tonight’s game,” said Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask who allowed five goals on 28 shots. “Tomorrow’s gonna be a work day again, and we have to fix things and hope that next game we play is gonna be a good one.”

Things are not all that bad for the Bruins and by no means is the sky falling, yet, but there’s no doubting they’ll need to better.

More like they have to be better.

Being better starts with putting forth more consistent and more 60-minute efforts.

“Yeah, I think we all know this isn’t good enough. We all know that we need to be better. I think we have to take the responsibility of having to be better. There’s no excuse for tonight,” Julien stated. “We didn’t play well enough, can’t come out in the third and decide to play a little bit better.

Following Loui Eriksson’s sixth goal of the season that gave the Bruins the lead 1:53 into the second period, the wheels completely fell off. Four Bruins penalties and three Sharks unanswered goals later and the Black and Gold were left wondering where things went wrong.

Lack of “commitment”, lack of “focus”, “too many passengers” were all reasons for the Bruins struggles that were thrown around in the locker room postgame. But the answer is simple: the Bruins just need to be better.

“We know that we’re not all playing our best every night, and we have to,” Bruins forward Brad Marchand told the media following the game. “I think right now if we’re going to get out of this, and we’re going to start putting a few wins together we have to have everyone going every night, and we can’t have any passengers at all. If we have one, that’s enough to cost us a game, and right now we have way too many.”

Changes have to be made, and it seems as if those changes are coming.

“This playing once in a while in games is just not gonna cut it in this league,” Julien stated. “We have to deal with certain things, and I plan on dealing with internally, but certainly not gonna start elaborating here.”

Changes were made in the third period. Ryan Spooner only saw three shifts, none five-on-five while Tyler Randell and Zac Rinaldo did not see a single shift in the game’s final frame.

“I don’t think we’ve got the focus or commitment of the whole group. I’m not saying anything that nobody knows here. I think it’s pretty obvious,” Julien added.

How are you going to address these issues, Claude?

“This is where part of my job has to be worked on in the dressing room and not certainly outside the dressing room.”

If Julien can’t get the team to “focus” and “commit,” things inside that dressing room won’t get any easier. The product outside of it surely needs to.