The A Hater’s Preview of the 2025-26 Boston Bruins | NHL Season Preview

The A Hater’s Preview of the 2025-26 Boston Bruins | NHL Season Preview

Fresh off of a horrendous season, the Boston Bruins have retoled going into the 202526 season, hoping to reclaim some of their past glory. With massive changes on the ice and behind the bench, are the Bruins poised to return, becoming the class of the Eastern Conference, or is this just the first step in the beginning of a long downfall that has been a long time coming for the Bruins? Forget me for you should forget it. You’re living in the past, man. After years of proclamations that this would be the year that the Boston Bruins finally fell off and age would catch up to them, last year was the year that they fell off and age caught up to them. The season got off to an inospicious start when they made the decision to split up with two-headed monster in goal and stick with Jeremy Swayman who then held out in camp because the Bruins didn’t give him a contract before they traded off Mina Soulmark. Not exactly a stellar start to the season for the Bruins. As a result, the Bruins got off to a slow start to the season, hovering around 500 for the first couple of months of the season till management finally had enough and pulled the plug on the Jim Montgomery experience, firing him on November 19th. Zaka was brought in to be the interimm coach, and just like his stint as head coach of the Colorado Avalanche. It went from a middling success to eventual crash. The team was basically on life support for the entire year until a 10-game losing streak in March and April finally sealed the end of an era of the Boston Bruins. At the deadline, they shipped off a bunch of veterans of campaign’s past, including Brandon Carlo, Trent Frederick, Charlie Coyle to the Colorado Avalanche, and Brad Marshon to the rival Florida Panthers, who eventually went on to lead them to a Stanley Cup. And he’s just resigned with them for 6 years, meaning he will end his career in Florida. All was said and done, the Bruins ended up missing the playoffs for the first time in a decade and a lot more questions than answers going into the offseason. So, the question is, how did they answer them? Don’t turn your back on me. Let’s get one thing straight. This is shooters tour. I’ve worked hard my whole life, paid my dues, and now it’s shooters turn. Up front, the Boston Bruins are honestly pretty well off. And that all starts with a guy who stirs the drink in David Posternok. 28. Pasta is still an elite goalcorer in the NHL. He’s good for 40 to 50 goals just about every season. And even in last year’s disappointing campaign, he was a bright spot for the Bruins consistently. Pasta probably should be your next captain, but half the fans want him jettisoned because he may have disagreed with Brad Marshon last year, you know, during one of the most toxic and one of the most frustrating seasons of his entire career. God forbid he ever show frustration in not making the playoffs for once. Up front with him, Morgan Gigi has been one of the surprise standouts who had a career year in 2024 25 with 57 points which included 33 goals. Wait, 33 goals? That can’t possibly be right. Wow. uh swimming in Pasta’s wake really paid off for him, didn’t it? Between the two of them, Geeky and Pasta, it’s a pretty solid foundation for the Bruins to build off of. The problem emerges when you look at the center position, where the lack of depth is honestly quite frightening. On the first line, you have Elias Lindholm, one of the big acquisitions of the Boston Bruins last offseason. Bruins became the latest team to try and convince themselves that a guy who’s only cracked 60 points three times in his career could be a number one center for them. As a result, this guy has six years left on a contract that pays him more money than Nikico Hishir. Now, this the perfect description of the Elas Lindholm situation is that the Bruins paid him as a number two center that they hoped could fill in as a number one center in a pinch when in reality he’s a number three center that most teams are praying never has to play on the second line. Second line, you have some better options at least in either Pavo Zaka or Kei Middlestat, whoever you choose to put there. The other one can slot to the wing and both of those guys are perfectly competent second liners. They’ll be joined on the second line by Victor Arvdson, cast out from the Edmonton Oilers and available for only the low low price of a fifth round pick. I’m sure that the Oilers will be able to get more out of a guy than the Oilers. You know, what do they know? They just won their conference two years in a row. The third line is made up exclusively of third line guys like Tenner Jano and John Cari along with young Matthew Pattra who Bruins fans just swear needs one full NHL season before he can finally unlock his true potential. Fourth line of guys like the newly acquired Michael Eimont, John Beecher, and Marcastellic are all fine fourth liners. The big question for the forward core is going to be whether that new shiny James Hagens that the Bruins acquired in the last draft might just be leaving BC a little bit early to play with the big club. Guy was at one point projected to be the number one pick in last year’s draft and fell down the draft boards all the way to the Bruins to seven. Given how razor thin their center depth is. I hope that at some point he will get a shot for them. All we hear is about that defense. They can’t stop a nose bleed. Similar to their forwards on the back end, the Bruins still have some absolute dogs. Charlie Makavoy was injured for most of the year last year. But when he’s healthy, the guy is a legitimate number one defenseman and I think it’s gone a bit understated just how impactful his absence was to the Bruins last year. Once he went down, that is when they proceeded to fall off a cliff. He’s paired with the better Lindome Hompus, who is himself coming back from an injury that sidelined him for most of the season last year. Down on the second pairing is another one of those big reagent additions from last year, Nikita Zidorov, who might be a little bit overpaid, but at least fits the role they wanted to be in perfectly along with Henry Yokihario, who hasn’t really shown himself to be worthy of a top four role, but then again, it’s kind of hard to do that when you’ve played most of your career in [ __ ] Buffalo. The third pairing includes Bruins fans Catnip and Mason Lorai, who’s been a surprisingly solid young defenseman in his first couple years in the league and has gotten rewarded with an extension as a result. particularly impressive given that most of the time he’s been paired with Andrew Peak, who is a defensive black hole, treats the puck like a live grenade anytimes remotely near him, but can still line up a few big brutal body checks. And Bruins fans should be pranked that none of those top six guys get injured because their defensive depth behind them is pretty non-existent. Their only good defensive prospect is young Frederick Brun. And I sincerely doubt that any Beast fans want to see Victor Sodtorm or Jordan Harris for extended periods of time. Wait, it’s not Goldberg. It’s here. Take the gold. In goal, the once and almost not and now future king Jeremy Swayman, the guy that the Bruins chose in the showdown between himself and Lenus Olmark. I always thought that it was the right move for the Bruins to hold on to the younger Jeremy Swayman, who’d also shown a lot more promise and potential to be a workhorse number one goalie than Olar. Unfortunately, last year’s play by Swayman is casting a little bit of doubt into that. He got his contract and immediately went and had one of the worst statistical years of his career, posting his first professional season with a GAA over three and a percentage below 90. In the overall body of work, I’m not too concerned about him just yet. I think that he should probably rebound this year to become much closer to the goalie that Bruins van saw for the previous 5 years of his career. But I do now have some concerns that he may not be able to shoulder the load as the number one guy without a competent backup like there to take some of the load off of him. Yonas Corporasalo, his backup is not very good and not a guy that you can count on to play 30 or 40 games a year. Swayman has to be the guy this year and the contract that the Bruins gave him mans that level of play. If he gets back to the form that he had previously shown, then they have a good chance of rebounding this year. If he doesn’t, however, that contract is going to start looking like an albatross very, very quickly, especially since it limits who they can sign as a backup for him. It’s unfair to say to Swayman, but it’s true. I think his performances here will ultimately make or break whether the Bruins rebound from a terrible previous season or whether their slide into the black hole of mediocrity just accelerates. You ain’t going to be able to hit them. They’re too good and you suck something up. Yes, sir. Do as I mentioned last year the Boston Bruins decided to fire Jim Montgomery in the middle of the season. He was quickly snapped up by the St. Louis Blues, who did go on to make the playoffs, and they replaced him with assistant Joe Sacka, who at least had some head coaching experience, though not very successfully in Colorado. After the season ended, it was rumored that the Bruins could be going after some big names as their future head coach. Roundly passed over by most of the veteran candidates that were on the market. When it came down to it, the most senior coach who was in serious consideration for the role was former Oilers coach Jay Woodcraftoft along with Mitch Love. But they ultimately decided to go with former player Marco Sturm. Sterm’s no coaching newbie. He was the head coach of the German men’s national team as well as a head coach in the AHL and an assistant with the LA Kings. Good resume there for Marco Sturm. The question is going to be, can this translate to the NHL? Frankly, I don’t know. He wasn’t one of my top coaching prospects that was available at the beginning of this, but the more I’ve looked into him, the more I think that he is worth a shot as head coach of the Boston Bruins. He has the resume behind him. It’s just a question mark more so than some of the other options that were available. I don’t think it’s a bad hire, but it’s definitely a coin flip as to whether he’s going to be a great coach or he’s going to be out of a job in three years. Since you’re new here, uh, I’m going to cut you a break. The Boston Marines basically did nothing this off season. Like legitimately, the only notable move that they made was trading a 2027 fifth round pick to the Oilers in exchange for Victor Arvdson. And I don’t really hate that move. Ardson only has one more year on his deal with $4 million in cap space this year. It costs nothing to get him and at worst he’s just going to be a boow candidate that he can chip off for another pick at the deadline this year. At best he rebounds. You can use him better than the Oilers did and he becomes a slightly better trade ship at the deadline and you can get a slightly better pick than the one you gave up to get him. The most notable moves that the Bruins made were actually in the draft this year. At pick number seven, they had perhaps the biggest steal of the draft when they took James Hagens out of Boston College. Hagens was a guy who had previously been projected to be the number one overall pick, and I was sure that he was going at least in the top five, if not the top three. For the Bruins to get him at pick number seven to me is just crazy good value. And I don’t think it’s out of line for Bruins fans to be hopeful that they’ve found a core piece of their top six for years to come with Higgins. They also got a pretty good value ad at pick number 51 in the second round with Will Moore. He’s a guy who I saw as a fringe firstrounder. So though I don’t have incredibly high expectations for him, getting him in the middle of the second round is pretty good work. And maybe he could end up making the Boston Bruins sooner than later, especially if they fully commit to a rebuild. Pretty good. Pretty damn good, lads. I mean, you got to love the pasta. David Postronok might be the most underrated superstar in the entire NHL, which is why it’s kind of shocking that there’s a relatively significant portion of the Bruins fan base that is down for trading him away for assets. Yes, I know you’re potentially entering the beginnings of a rebuild. But Pasta is still in his 20s. He’s a legitimate bonafide 40 to 50 goal, 80 to 90 point player minimum. And given what he’s done for his linemates like Morgan Gigi, I would want my young potentially next core players spending a lot of time with him getting experience and confidence as a result. And it’s not like you have some other young players you need to lock up in the coming years, especially now that Morgan Giggi has been locked up. You have Pasa for another 5 years. The cap is going down. Hang on to him for his prime years and try to build around him would be my suggestion. I’ll give you a winter prediction. It’s going to be cold. It’s going to be great and it’s going to last you for the rest of your life. And as my suggestion in part because when you look at this Bruins roster, there is a lot of talent there. Like the fact that they missed the playoffs so badly last year really is a function of their terrible injury luck and bad coaching. Yes, their depth is incredibly thin, especially up front, but they have a lot of high-end talent. guys like Pasta, Makavoy, Geeky, and Zaka. Truly, all they need is for some of their depth to just not be [ __ ] like it was last year, for them to have some competent coaching and injury luck, and for Jeremy Swayman to rebound to somewhat similar form than he had the previous years. Now, I don’t necessarily believe that that’s likely to happen in particular because I’m not very confident in Marco Sturm as a coach, and they didn’t do much to upgrade their depth. As I mentioned, one of the biggest factors as to whether they’re going to have a rebound season will ironically be their number seven overall pick, James Hagens. If he stays in college for another year and doesn’t play with the Bruins, they’re probably going to have some troubles. If he can come out and make the team and slot into that top six, I think he solves a lot of their problems, to be honest. Now, I’m not sitting here saying that I think that the Boston Bruins are going to make the playoffs this year. They’re in a brutal division. and they have a lot of the same issues that they had last year and they made basically no moves to change any of that. However, I do think that this team is better than a lot of people are giving them credit for and I think people are underestimating some of the talent that they still do have on that team. Ultimately, I think that the Bruins do end up being sellers and that they end up missing the playoffs, but I think they’re going to be much more competitive than people expect. We’re [ __ ] [ __ ] [Music] Hey, hey, hey. [Music] Hey, [Music]

The 2025-26 Boston Bruins are looking to avoid the stink of disappointment from last year.

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