The Bruins added a big piece to their training camp roster on Monday with the insertion of star winger David Pastrnak. Now they just need to cross their fingers that he stays there.<\/p>\n
Pastrnak missed the first half-week with knee tendinitis, an issue that dates to last season. It is the reason why he focused more on biking in the offseason as opposed to running and he said that helped a lot but he needed some extra time.<\/p>\n
While durability has not been a problem for Pastrnak, the fact that it cropped up to the extent that he missed part of training camp can in no way be construed as good news. But Pastrnak was not sweating it.<\/p>\n
\u201cListen, I played with it the whole year last year so I wouldn\u2019t be too worried about it,\u201d said Pastrnak. \u201cI spent a lot of time in the summer to make it better and it did get much better than it was last year. Obviously, it wasn\u2019t perfect and it\u2019s not perfect yet so it was perfect timing to try to get it even better. Nothing too concerning, it\u2019s just something that was nagging me for a very long time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Does he expect to deal with it throughout the season?<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know. We did it the whole year last year\u2026 it\u2019s something where time will tell,\u201d said Pastrnak.<\/p>\n
The sniper did not have a great start to the season last year but poured it on in the second half, finishing with 43-63-106. It was the third straight year he played all 82 games.<\/p>\n
Pastrnak is entering into a new phase of his career. With the departure of Brad Marchand at the trade deadline last year, he is now the longest-tenured Bruin. Both he and Charlie McAvoy will wear the A\u2019s, as they have before. But it is a little different this time around. At the moment, there is no captain. While coach Marco Sturm has stressed that he wants to spread the leadership around, the mantle of responsibility will be a little heavier on those two.<\/p>\n
With his return to the ice, Pastrnak now feels fully a part of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, there\u2019s a lot of work ahead of us. This past week I was a little bit away from the guys and didn\u2019t practice with them. My mind went a little bit somewhere else. I was trying to get better ASAP so I can help out on the ice,\u201d said Pastrnak. \u201cI haven\u2019t been around much with the guys but we all know we have a lot work ahead of us. We\u2019re going to go out there and compete and get better every single day and be proud and honored to be here every day and play for the city and this organization. It\u2019s Day One for me around the guys, so it\u2019s nice to be back and get the feeling, the mood. I watched a couple of scrimmages and the compete is here. It\u2019s nice to see the guys are really hungry and excited. I think with the new system, it\u2019s going to take time. But what we can do as players is focus in the meetings and go out there and compete and leave everything out there every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
It may not have been a coincidence that Pastrnak\u2019s return came on the first day the new coaching staff practiced the power play. With assistant Steve Spott running the man advantage, Pastrnak was on a first unit with Charlie McAvoy, Morgan Geekie, Pavel Zacha and Elias Lindholm.<\/p>\n
The B\u2019s finished 29th on the PP last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven though it\u2019s power play, you have to have some structure to succeed because the game is changing and the penalty kill is really good,\u201d said Pastrnak. \u201cYou have to be on the same page with the guys. It was one of many of our problems last year. Sometimes we would get away from being on the same page. So good Day One. We just need a little more time and we have to make sure who is there can do the job, not only to score goals but to create the momentum at least.\u201d<\/p>\n
As any coach would, Sturm welcomed the return of Pastrnak.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou feel it today. As soon as he stepped on the ice, it was present what we were missing the last few days. It was good energy, especially coming from him,\u201d said Sturm. \u201cWe have those pieces on the power play, we just have to click. We have to connect. And you saw today, it starts with good entries \u2013 breakouts, entries and getting the puck.\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n
One of the tweaks that Sturm is making to the Bruins defensive zone system is taking a little responsibility off the centermen, asking them to hold their position more while they get help from defensemen up the wall.<\/p>\n
Fraser Minten\u2019s numbers (two shots, three hits, 5-for-6 on faceoffs, even) looked better than Matt Poitras\u2019 (no shots, two hits, 4-for-10, minus-3). Sturm lumped them together.<\/p>\n
\u201cI put (Minten) and Matty and those young guys in the same bracket a little bit. I liked their energy. They tried. I mentioned (Sunday) that they tried hard, worked hard,\u201d said Sturm. \u201cThe feedback from them what I got was they were excited, they just wanted to do everything right and it seemed like they did \u2013 especially in the first period \u2013 everything wrong because they were just too excited. It got better in the second and third. You could see it on the clips but it\u2019s going take a little bit of time. I want to sit down with them over the next few days to just give them some feedback and clips of what I want to see. But what I got out of (Sunday) is that I just have to settle those guys down a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
The excitement may have caused them to chase the puck more than it\u2019s called for.<\/p>\n
\u201cStarting with breakouts,\u201d said Sturm. \u201cWhen we messed up a breakout \u2013 for example, (Nikita) Zadorov had a giveaway on a breakout \u2013 we should have had somebody there to help us and we didn\u2019t, because we were just somewhere else\u2026 We want to play connected and we were disconnected a lot of times, especially in the first half of the game.\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n
The B\u2019s will play their second preseason game Tuesday night against the Rangers at Madison Square Garden.<\/p>\n
Originally Published: September 22, 2025 at 2:49 PM EDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Bruins added a big piece to their training camp roster on Monday with the insertion of star…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205256,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5099],"tags":[154,95,5132,530,2178,5,14781,40,4,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-205255","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boston-bruins","8":"tag-boston","9":"tag-boston-bruins","10":"tag-bostonbruins","11":"tag-bruins","12":"tag-david-pastrnak","13":"tag-hockey","14":"tag-matt-poitras","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-nhl","17":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115251613772656721","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}