BOSTON — There are a lot of aspects the Boston Bruins need to fall their way this year if they’re going to have any hope of bouncing back from what was nothing short of a miserable season in 2024-25.
They’ll have to have reliable scoring depth behind David Pastrnak. They’ll need to play a tight, defensive style and limit mistakes in their own zone. Most of all, they’ll need Jeremy Swayman to be a true starting NHL goalie.
Who knows if that will all happen consistently throughout an 82-game schedule. But at least for one game, the Bruins got all that and more on Saturday afternoon at TD Garden, where they defeated the New York Rangers, 4-1, to close out the preseason in ideal fashion.
Nikita Zadorov put the Bruins on the board first at 5:55 of the first period, sniping a wrist shot over the shoulder of Rangers goalie Igor Shesterkin. However, it was an assist by Fraser Minten that was the true highlight of the play.
Skating in tight on Shesterkin, Minten had as clear of an opportunity to put the puck on net as one could possibly ask for. Instead, he zipped a backhand pass through traffic directly onto and directly onto Zadorov’s stick blade inside the left face-off circle.
A Minty fresh feed and finish 👌 pic.twitter.com/gfVNyzxUrS
— Boston Bruins (@NHLBruins) October 4, 2025
“I knew [Pastrnak] was in the slot, and thought about passing to him first,” said Minten. “Then I saw that they all thought he was going to get the puck, too. Z made a really good offensive read there, jumping in.”
It was another dynamic display of passing that led to Boston’s second goal. Operating behind New York’s net, Viktor Arvidsson and Casey Mittelstadt combined to set up Pavel Zacha in the low slot to make it 2-0 Bruins.
“They’re getting to know each other a little bit better,” Bruins coach Marco Sturm said of his second line. “They got to feel comfortable, and today was much better. I’m hoping they’re going to continue like that, if they’re going to stay together and give us some scoring threat besides the big line.”
The offense didn’t come nearly as easily for the Bruins the rest of the game. In the middle frame, they went 16 minutes without a shot on goal. Eventually, though, a New York penalty led to a goal from Boston’s power play, as Elias Lindholm deflected in a shot from Charlie McAvoy.
Elias extends the lead to 3️⃣ pic.twitter.com/6zshEOAEY2
— Boston Bruins (@NHLBruins) October 4, 2025
“You want to have at least a couple chances or goals in the preseason to kind of feel good about the unit,” said Zacha. “We had some good practices this week, and worked on it a lot. I’m happy it paid off. That’s something that’s big in the season, special teams, and we have to be better than last year.”
The Rangers did eventually manage to get on the board when Noah Laba scored on the power play at 16:32 of the third, but that didn’t matter much once Zadorov hit an empty net goal with 90 seconds remaining to put a cap on a 3o-save performance by Swayman.
“It was just nice to see some rubber and get some high quality chances against,” said Swayman. “It feels good to get training camp under our feet. We can build on every game, and that was what we did with these six games. I think our group is in a good spot to get started here next week.”
The games count for real starting Wednesday when the Bruins visit the Washington Capitals to open the regular season.
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