The HONEST TRUTH About The Boston Bruins

The HONEST TRUTH About The Boston Bruins

This is David Postronok and he along with the rest of the Bruins might be the most overlooked group in the NHL. It’s true the Bruins have stumbled to say the least in recent years. Battling inconsistency, not having a clear identity, and of course having a thin prospect pool. This slide has turned them from a perennial contender into a lottery candidate almost overnight, reshaping the image of respect that once existed for this longtime franchise. But this off season, while somewhat warranted, has brought the conversation maybe just a bit too far. Some now argue that the Bruins have one of the weakest rosters and darkest outlooks in the league, suggesting that there is no hope, even though this team has quite a few areas with upside. But are they right? Is this upcoming season basically over before it starts for the Bruins? And is their future really that grim? Well, today let’s talk about Boston’s rosters to identify their strengths, their shortcomings from last season and the state of their pipeline following the draft and some acquisitions. This will help us determine if the Bruins are ready to surprise us once again or if they’re really the frauds that everyone believes them to be. So, why am I making this video, Jimmy? Haven’t you made a million videos about the Bruins over the course of last year and the off season? Yes. Should I stop? No, because I think that they’ve actually become a hot button topic, especially over this past month or so. I’m making this video because the season is right around the corner, and with that comes everyone’s favorite tradition, prediction videos. Most creators and fans generally agree on the league’s top teams, throwing in a few wild picks to keep things interesting. But in nearly every long- form or short form prediction video I’ve seen lately, the Bruins end up coming in at the very bottom of the league for some reason. But is that fair? Should the Bruins really be written off after just one down year? That’s exactly why I’m making this video. So, before we set in, be sure to hit that like button now and subscribe to the channel. Kick back for the next 10 to 15 minutes as we delve into what’s upcoming for the Boston Bruins this season. All right, so where to begin? Where to begin? I think the best way to approach this video would be to talk about a few things that went wrong last season that really kind of held the Bruins back. some things that I feel are changeable and fixable for this team as they embark on a new campaign. The first thing that I feel was the biggest issue for them last season was goalending and defense. Those two fundamental things helped Boston rack up 768 wins since the 2008 2009 season, the most by any team in that span. This season, however, those two fundamental things disappeared entirely. Boston posted a team 884 save percentage, ranking 27th in the NHL, which is a significant decline from the 911 mark that they had just a year prior. Interestingly enough, the last time the Bruins finished below a top 10 save percentage as a team was in the 2016 2017 season, which is nearly a decade ago. So looking at the trends, if you look at this year, it’s more of a rare outlier than any sort of pattern that people are suggesting. I think that Boston’s coaching staff is much better than what they put out this season. And I think that they’re going to find a way to figure things out and put out a better product because at this point, this was something that we just never see from a team that’s as consistent as the Bruins. And while we all keep continuing to harp on goalending, it’s very important for a team like the Bruins that hasn’t really drafted well enough with their offense to come up with bad goalending. We saw it through the Ras era, the Allar Swayman era. The reason the Bruins were able to still put out a solid product was because they always managed to put together a defense and a goalending tandem that managed to get them through the tough times. And when that sort of fell apart this year with the Swayman negotiations, which we’re going to get into in a minute, then the rest of the team just kind of followed suit. So, let’s talk about that. Jeremy Swayman finally stepped into the number one role after Boston traded Lena’s Allmark last July. But a contract dispute delayed Swayman’s arrival until just days before the regular season began. By the time he signed his 8-year 66 million deal, the 26-year-old had missed almost all of training camp and the preeason. That sort of delay may have contributed to his slow start. And in turn, when you’re not able to have a good start to the year, maybe your confidence is affected, or you start changing things, trying to fix a part of your game that never really needed to be adjusted. Through the course of the year, Swayman played a career-high 58 games, but his 892 save percentage and 3.12 goals against average were the worst of his career. His minus 9.1 goals saved above expected ranked him 92nd among 102 qualifying goalies, according to Moneypuck. And when you couple that with the slightly below average play of Corposalo and an injured defense, that’s how you got a pretty big slosh of poor underlying numbers coming out of Boston. The next big thing was goal scoring. Boston was aggressive in free agency out of necessity. That’s important to remember. Their top six forwards were seriously lacking in scoring and with Jake De Brusk departing in free agency, they needed some reinforcements. This sort of urgency explains why the Bruins were willing to pay Elias Lindholm a bit more than he was probably worth on the open market because they were just a bit more desperate than some other teams out there. But adding a veteran here and there is by no means a solution to arguably the team’s biggest problem over the past two seasons, a top six center, which we now know in hindsight Eli Lindholm is not anymore. Through the course of the season, the Bruins put up some pretty terrible offensive numbers. They finished 27th in goals scored with just 222 goals on the year and ranked 29th on the power play, converting only at a 15.2% success rate. Offensively, David Posanok and Morgan Geeki were really the only bright spots for the team’s lineup. Pasta put up his third consecutive 100 point season scoring 40 goals for the fourth straight year while Geeki had a career year managing to score 33 goals and 57 points playing with Pasta for the majority of the season. That’s really all I got for the offense when it comes to positives. Outside of that, nearly every other player either stayed relatively the same or saw some form of regression. Coyle and Zaka, two guys who had really stepped up for Boston just a year prior, dropped off from their career highs. Meanwhile, promising young guys like Trent Frederick and Matthew Potra, just were unable to step up into the roles that the Bruins were expecting them to play. Couple all of that with the layer of dysfunction that the locker room was experiencing, some nagging injuries, and even high-profile additions like Lind Holm and Zadorov falling short of expectations, and you’re left with an offense that wasn’t just bad, it was one of the league’s worst. Now, I think that quite nicely summarizes the 2024 25 Bruins as a whole. And based on how I outlined this past season, the future in Boston doesn’t seem all that bright. making some of these narratives a bit more clear as to why people want to jump on the Bruins future is hopeless. But when it comes down to it, the Bruins are a little bit more unique from other bottom 10 teams in the league, which is why I’m expecting more of a surprising year than some other people. Look at the teams like San Jose, Chicago. They are building through the draft, getting incredibly young, and finding those once-ina-lifetime generational talent players that they can build around. But if you look at the Bruins, they already have those sort of players. David Poshnock, Charlie Makavoy, Jeremy Swayman. These are some of the best players at their position, and they’re all in their primes, locked down to some pretty lengthy, high-profile contracts. So, I don’t think that the Bruins are ready to just pack it in and try and get a top 10 pick again. I think that we’re going to see this team be a little bit more motivated than we saw last season. motivation, confidence, culture, those are all important, but they’re only a small piece to the overall picture of a successful hockey team. So, for the Bruins to turn their season around, yes, they’re going to need all of those things, but they’re also going to need to fix a lot of those big issues that we saw and just went over in the earlier portion of this video. So, I think it’s probably the most important to start with the biggest issue they had last year, or maybe even the biggest storyline from last year, which was their goalending, and more specifically Jeremy Swayman. I went through the numbers and reasoning earlier, so I won’t rehash all of that, but entering the second year of his contract and now having both training camp and preseason to build some momentum. Swayman will have the chance to show people that this one bad season was just that, a bad season. An important thing that goes along with a good goalending tandem, though, is a healthier defense. And I think people are real quick to forget that both Makavoy and Lindol missed a significant portion of last season. So getting those two guys back in front of Swayman and also letting other guys like Mason Lorai take on a lesser role should overall better this team. Now to be fair they did lose a very reliable guy in Brandon Carlo to a trade. They also lost Brad Marshian. Those are players that are going to be hard to replace. But when you get rid of those older veteran players, I think it does open up opportunities for younger guys to come up through the system and show what they’re capable of, which for a team like Boston, I think is a very positive thing. Now, the next thing I feel is important to talk about because it was such a big storyline for the Bruins last year is their head coaching. Joe Sacko is gone and Marco Stro is in making his head coaching debut in the NHL. In fact, and from what I’ve gathered through interviews so far, he’s a pretty defensive-minded guy who believes that success starts from the blue line, which is no offense to the Bruins, but exactly the way that everyone wants them to play based on their roster makeup. There isn’t a lot of pressure on Marco this year. I think that he’s going to set the tone early and provide the Bruins with a new identity, which I feel is very important. But the last thing they need is another head coaching swap or something to go ary in the locker room. So essentially, what Marco needs to come in and do is tap into the best features of this roster and just keep the boys on track and build a new culture for the Bruins rather than trying to reestablish the one that they already had. The next major thing, quite honestly, that the Bruins are going to need is some more contributions from players. They not only acquired this off season, but from last off season as well. The Bruins did not add a topline center yet again, meaning that they’re going to run it with either Elias Lindholm, Pavle Zaka, or Casey Middlestad as the topline center between David Poshock and Morgan Geeki. Not ideal, but also not hopeless either. Since the end of the season, reports have come out suggesting that Lindholm was dealing with a back injury that many believe was responsible for his lackluster performance during his debut with the Bruins. This would be best case scenario because with Elias Lindholm locked down to such a long deal, the last thing you need is for him to continue falling in your depth chart. I think at points last season, I saw him centering the third line or even just playing as a winger on the third line, which is not what the Bruins need. They have plenty of contracts that are high AAVs and long terms that are being buried within their lineup. And when you bring those sort of players in, you then have to go back into free agency to find players to play on your top lines. And that then prevents some of your younger players from excelling in those bigger roles. So having Elias Lindholm come into this season potentially off an injury as the reason why he was bad last year, I think would be best case scenario. And hopefully it’s not something that lingers for a player like him. The other guy who could potentially have an impact is Victor Arvinson. When they made the trade, obviously it was received poorly because it felt like the Oilers were backed into a corner. But I don’t know, the more I look at this, the more I just feel like complaining about it is not really going to do anything. So trying to find the positives to take away from something like this is likely the best way to go. And for a guy like Ardinson who is only a few years removed from a 50point season, I think that there is a potential chance for him to find success in Boston. Now, if you’re not finding that success in Edmonton with McDavid and dry settle, I doubt you’re going to find it while playing with Boston centers. But hey, you never know. Obviously, Boston wants to get the most out of this player and try to build up his trade value at the very least. So, best case scenario, we get that 50point player, Victor Ardson, and worst case scenario, he’s a 25 to 30 point player that hopefully we can either trade at the deadline or just get rid of at the end of the season. Who knows? But with all of these players, I think the Bruins have more than enough 50point guys within their top six. So hopefully one of these guys can find some momentum and maybe take on a little bit more responsibility in Boston this year as they try to move ahead. But lastly, and arguably the most important thing for the Bruins is their prospects. In recent years, the Bruins haven’t produced many NHL regulars. And in fact, only seven players drafted by Boston over the past seven years have reached an NHL game. and just two in Beecher and Mason Lorai have played more than a hundred games with the club. That’s it. Not exactly the best track record. For Boston to fix this foggy future that has been talked about, they will need to start putting their best prospects into roles that suit their development a little bit more. And what do I mean by this? Don’t take a player like Fabian Lysel, bring him up to the NHL level, and give him fourthline minutes. You need to toss him in your top six with players who are going to get the best out of him. That’s how you develop these guys. And if a guy like Lizel can’t prove himself in that role, then that’s when you start talking about moving him or finding a different prospect to work on. And don’t make that seem like you can only work on one prospect at a time. You have other players like Zellers and Minton that you could definitely put in some significant roles this year, especially when you are missing a lot of those top six players that you likely are going to need to fill with these team friendly contracts since you’re overpaying on the free agency market. The best way for the Bruins to have a good year would be, in my opinion, to put a guy like Patra on line one and two to see if he can manage to get back to that promising player he was a few years ago. And just hope that one of these younger guys is the answer to all of your glaring topline center needs because it’s very unlikely that you’re going to hit the open market and find a guy like Conor McDavid waiting to come to your team. It just doesn’t happen all that often. So, to summarize, I do understand why these narratives exist and why people believe that the Bruins are going to be a bottom 10 team, but I just don’t think that with their current makeup and all of the moves that they had this off season that we’re going to see a season that’s similar to last year at all. Pasta, Sway, Makavoy, they are all in their prime. Defensively, their blue line is still very respectable and when healthy. As much as fans hate to admit it, that’s their bread and butter. And of course, then there’s Don Sweeney, who’s done a very nice job restocking the prospect pool in Boston. And even though most of the fans want him gone, I think that we need to give him a little bit more credit here because it will provide this team with a bit more excitement over the next 5 years or so. I’m not saying that by any stretch the Bruins are back and that they’re going to be the top team of the Atlantic division, but I do think that they’re going to be a sneaky good team based on people’s expectations this year and could potentially surprise a lot of us by either being around a wild card spot towards the end of the year or actually getting into one of those final wildcard spots. The NHL is an unpredictable league and teams like Boston who have an established winning culture through decades more often than not find a way to get it done. Will it be easy? No, of course not. But should you be surprised if this team somehow is playing hockey in the later spring months of 2026? Well, I can’t decide that for you. So, let me know in the comments below. Thank you guys so much for watching this video. If you enjoyed the content today, be sure to give it a thumbs up and subscribe. Now, I also have a few other pieces for you guys to check out here on the screen if you’re bored as we go through the rest of the off season and you want to get your fix before the hockey season begins. Again, thank you guys so much for watching and supporting the channel. I will see you in the next upload.

Today let’s delve into arguably the most disrespected team in the NHL, The Boston Bruins. After over a decade of consistency, the Bruins had one of the franchises worst statistical seasons in quite some time. Riddled with injuries, underperforming stars, and lacking overall offense, Boston found themselves picking in the lottery rather then competing for a cup. Of course with that comes plenty of scrutiny and negativity, as the Bruins go from a well respected franchise to one that many are now discounting. But has the conversation gone too far? Are the Bruins really a bad team or was this just a bad season? Well today let’s talk Boston hockey to explain how the Bruins have become the most disrespected team in the NHL. Subscribe to Jimmy Hockey for more NHL News and Breakdowns.

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