Horton/By S. Bradley

BOSTON — If I was enduring a season that’s essentially turned into one giant slump, I imagine I’d be looking to make any change possible to turn my season around.

Bruins winger Nathan Horton, whose latest stretch of ineptitude can be boiled down to just one goal in 12 games since returning from a two-game injury absence, joked before he left for the All-Star break a week and a half ago that he would go look for some new sticks with goals in them. Although he found a few he liked, he has yet to change.

All I can ask is, what are you waiting for?

Horton, who has scored just 13 goals in 51 games this season, admitted this morning he used a new stick for the morning skate in preparation for tonight’s TD Garden match-up with Montreal. But he’s not sure if he’s going to make the switch for the game.

“It’s just to try something different,” he said.

When you’re struggling through a season like Horton’s, different is really the only way to go. Horton’s decision to hold steady with one particular model of stick is particularly peculiar considering he admitted that in past seasons he has tried two, three, even four different sticks. He’s actually the type of guy that if he sees a new stick being used by a teammate, or even an opponent, he tries to get one to try it out.

Yet here we are on Feb. 9 and he hasn’t changed sticks.

“I probably should’ve,” he told me.

He said he changes curves all the time, and he even might try the type of curve he had back when he was 18. But he’s not sure.

“It’s more just to feel better, get something new. Whenever you switch your sticks, you’re excited. I like it,” said Horton.

I get what Horton’s saying. When you’re a kid and you get a new pair of sneakers, and they’re white and immaculate, you feel like it’s a new beginning. And who doesn’t love the new-car smell?

So for the love of all that’s right in hockey and for the sake of truly trying to make good on the promise that came with his acquisition by the Bruins, Nathan Horton has to change his stick, and soon.