“I know what I can do and the player that I’ve grown into. … I know that I can be a good player in this league.”
Morgan Geekie is on pace for 58 goals this season. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
November 25, 2025 | 4:54 PM
5 minutes to read
ELMONT, N.Y. — What a difference a year has made for Morgan Geekie.
Last November, the Bruins winger was seemingly mired in no man’s land within Jim Montgomery’s forward grouping — scratched in five of Boston’s first 20 games.
He didn’t etch his name on the scoresheet until Boston’s seventh game of the 2024-25 campaign. He finally lit the lamp 12 games in.
Those days spent on the outside looking in at Boston’s lineup still resonate with the 27-year-old Geekie — even if those struggles stand in stark contrast to the seemingly endless barrage of pucks he’s peppering into twine this month.
“It was pretty tough. I’m not gonna lie,” Geekie told Boston.com Tuesday of his slow start last year. “Obviously your job’s at stake, and when you’re in that position at the end of a deal, and you’re not playing well, a lot of things can add up.”
“I’m trying to do a job for my family and support my family, and I think that maybe gets overlooked a little bit, so you have the weight of that as well. … It’s definitely a big change with where I am now, but it’s good. I don’t think I would be where I am without those hardships.”
Those hardships have seemingly fueled Geekie’s transformation into one of the league’s elite scorers in record time.
Once deemed a spare cog in Boston’s forward corps, the sight of Geekie rifling pucks past netminders is now as regular an occurrence as fellow Bruins sniper David Pastrnak uncorking rockets from the left circle.
Since the calendar flipped to 2025, Pastrnak ranks second in the NHL in goals scored this year with 41 across 67 total games. The only player with more? Geekie — with 42.
Fresh off of a 33-goal campaign primarily sparked after Montgomery’s exit, Geekie has already dispelled the notion that his breakout last year was an unsustainable fluke.
With 17 goals in just 24 games this year, Geekie is tied with Colorado’s Nathan MacKinnon for the league lead in tallies — and is on pace for a whopping 58 goals over an 82-game stretch.
Geekie’s emergence has even raised the conversation that he could be in the running for a spot on Team Canada’s roster for the upcoming 2026 Olympics — a notion that Geekie himself downplayed.
“Obviously, that’s a dream that every kid in Canada has,” Geekie said. “At the end of the day, I look at the lineup and you go down and I’m like — whose spot are you realistically gonna take? But I appreciate it wholeheartedly — just to have my name in the conversation, no matter how long that list may be.”
A peak under the hood reveals some of what has fueled Geekie’s evolution from bottom-six spud gun into top-line howitzer.
Geekie’s quick release and willingness to pepper the net from outside of Grade-A ice has often had goalies too late to account for the screaming surge of vulcanized rubber heading their way.
A slap shot delivered by Geekie against the Maple Leafs on Nov. 11 registered at 103.03 miles per hour: the fastest shot in the NHL so far this year, per NHL Edge tracking data. Eleven of Geekie’s 17 goals have come from either mid-range (eight) or long-range (three) areas in the offensive zone — both of which rank in the 99th percentile among NHLers this year.
Of course, what can’t be measured on the stat sheet holds just as much value to Geekie when it comes to the reasoning behind his recent success.
For Geekie, a renewed sense of confidence trumps all other factors.
Geekie credited former Bruins coaches and teammates like Joe Sacco and Brad Marchand for building that conviction back up during last fall’s stumbles — back when even he started to foster doubts about whether Boston was going to be just the latest pit stop in a career littered with short tenures and a dearth of opportunity.
The subsequent results speak for themselves.
“I think it allows you to be a little bit more selfish with the puck in those decisions. … I feel like when you don’t see those pucks going in, you feel like you’re almost wasting an opportunity, and you want to give it to somebody else in a better spot,” Geekie said of his increased shot volume. “But I think when you start to trust yourself a little more, the confidence starts to grow.
“The hardest part is when you have no confidence and you’re just trying to get a little bit of it. And then once you get a little bit, you just start adding every day. I feel like, right now, I’m pretty content with where I am. I know what I can do.”
The reminders of his previous labors is far from the only thing fueling Geekie’s resurgence.
Be it social-media venom, chirps broadcast over the airwaves, or blunt critiques put into print, pro athletes are usually best-served avoiding said noise when the confidence in their craft is slipping.
Geekie, however, embraces it.
He noted ahead of the 2024-25 season that he kept up with plenty said about him, especially when some doubted that his 17-goal debut season in Boston was going to be the norm.
He echoed a similar approach during those days spent watching games from the ninth floor last November, and again this fall when many labeled his 33 tallies as fool’s gold.
That outside noise hasn’t quieted down — even as Geekie continues to find the back of the net, night in and night out.
Amid a year where Geekie has already traversed both the lowest of lows and the highest of highs, the Bruins forward is relishing any opportunity to prove more doubters wrong.
“No, I still pay attention,” Geekie said with a smile about reading plenty said about him. “People think that I’m still a Pasta merchant. So it is what it is. I mean, that’s always gonna be the shtick when you score 30 goals with a good player like that.
“But I know what I can do and the player that I’ve grown into. … . I know that I can be a good player in this league, and then when people are, ‘Ah, he’s only good because [Pastrnak’s] good. “He’s a world-class player, and everyone knows that. But it does take a good player to click with a great player.”
Conor Ryan is a staff writer covering the Bruins, Celtics, Patriots, and Red Sox for Boston.com, a role he has held since 2023.
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