{"id":554426,"date":"2026-04-17T09:48:21","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T09:48:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/554426\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T09:48:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T09:48:21","slug":"heres-how-the-bruins-pulled-off-their-playoff-u-turn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/554426\/","title":{"rendered":"Here’s how the Bruins pulled off their playoff U-turn"},"content":{"rendered":"

In context, five other teams qualified for this season\u2019s playoffs after similarly falling outside of the structure last spring. Only the Bruins did so off a one-year hiatus, compared to Buffalo (14 straight misses<\/a>), Anaheim (7), Utah\/Arizona (5), Philadelphia (5), and Pittsburgh (3).<\/p>\n

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In the 32-team NHL, it can be a long, long crawl back to the second season. No one knows that better than the Sabres, who last appeared in 2011, during Barack Obama\u2019s first term in the White House. The Red Wings now lead the league\u2019s lonely hearts club with 10 consecutive DNQs and 820 consecutive cruises to nowhere.<\/p>\n

\"MarcoMarco Sturm (right) has delivered for Don Sweeney in his first chance at an NHL head coaching job.John Tlumacki\/Globe Staff<\/p>\n

The Bruins\u2019 makeover, fashioned by GM Don Sweeney and team president Cam Neely, stirred some controversy largely because it was so expansive. It included dealing away fan favorite\/captain Brad Marchand and popular veterans Charlie Coyle and Brandon Carlo, among others.<\/p>\n

The trio, all of whom played in the 2019 Cup Final vs. St. Louis<\/a>, logged a collective 2,463 games for the Bruins, including 304 playoff appearances. Other than assistant coach Chris Kelly, Marchand was the last thread to the Cup title in 2011. The only proven producer acquired in return was Casey Mittelstadt, the ex-Sabre sent here by the Avs in the Coyle swap<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But from the pain of change came profit. Those deals and others, along with UFA roster additions on July 1, ultimately made for a highly effective pick-me-up of a franchise in decline.<\/p>\n

The team that last season plummeted to 76 points, its offense flat and its compete level flaccid, rallied back behind new coach Marco Sturm for 100 and the No. 1 wild-card spot in the East.<\/p>\n

All the moves in concert, including the inherent risk of hiring Sturm as a first-year NHL bench boss in June<\/a>, translated to a faster, feistier, more offensively balanced, and much more competitive iteration of the Black & Gold.<\/p>\n

The challenge within the makeover was fitting the newly acquired assets \u2014 including Mittelstadt and unproven forwards Fraser Minten and Marat Khusnutdinov \u2014 with the few existing high-end assets that came to the franchise as draft picks: star forward David Pastrnak, top defensemen Charlie McAvoy, and emerging franchise goalie Jeremy Swayman.<\/p>\n

The next step, 115 days later, came in the annual free-agent market, which historically has been an exercise in mining fool\u2019s gold for Sweeney and Neely. Big and expensive swings, including as recently as the prior July 1 for Elias Lindholm and Nikita Zadorov<\/a> (combined $86.2 million), failed to move the needle. They\u2019ve both improved their standing this season.<\/p>\n

Historically, the best of all the Sweeney-Neely July 1 moves came in 2023, the then budget acquisition (two years, $4 million) of Morgan Geekie. He led the club\u2019s goal scorers this season with 39 despite a 17-game scoring drought late in the season, establishing a career high for a second consecutive year. He now has 89 goals in his three seasons here.<\/p>\n

\"MoganMogan Geekie score just six of his 39 goals after the Olympic break, but he still finished well ahead of Pavel Zacha (30) for the team lead.Matthew J. Lee\/Globe Staff<\/p>\n

The haul this time also included the trade that brought in Viktor Arvidsson<\/a> from Edmonton for the pittance of a fifth-round draft pick. The change of scenery led the skilled, tenacious Arvidsson, affectionately labeled a \u201clittle weasel<\/a>\u201d by Sturm, to reclaim his scoring touch \u2014 his 25 goals were fourth-best on the team.<\/p>\n

In his pre-series presser Thursday in Brighton, Sweeney noted Arvidsson\u2019s important role in the turnaround, and how the Swedish winger overcame a \u201cdangerous\u201d injury (lower body) and eventually helped galvanize an impactful line with Mittelstadt on the left and pivot Pavel Zacha.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat line has been a massive boost injection for our club on both sides of it,\u201d said Sweeney. \u201cVery well trusted from a defensive standpoint. But their [offensive] production was paramount to one of the reasons why we\u2019re here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Essential, too, was Sturm\u2019s decision in training camp to deploy Zacha exclusively as a center. In his prior three seasons here, none as productive as this one, Zacha often toggled between center and wing. Now 29, he\u2019s emerged as the club\u2019s top center at five-on-five and a key contributor to a much-improved power play.<\/p>\n

The priciest of the UFA acquisitions was Tanner Jeannot (five years, $17 million), the \u201cpiss and vinegar\u201d agent<\/a> that Neely stated over the summer was vital to a turnaround. Sweeney also felt last year\u2019s team became \u201can easy out,\u201d a squad that lacked requisite fight\/compete and, to make matters worse, struggled mightily on the power play. (Their popgun 15.2 percent ranked 29th in the league.)<\/p>\n

\"TannerTanner Jeannot has brought the expected physicality in his first season with the Bruins, as Montreal’s Josh Anderson experienced in December.Danielle Parhizkaran\/Globe Staff<\/p>\n

Jeannot, now a left wing fixture on the fourth line with Sean Kuraly (a UFA returnee also hired July 1) and Mark Kastelic, has delivered as asked. His statement bout of the year came Feb. 28 when he traded blow for blow with heavyweight Nic Deslauriers in a 3-1 loss in Philadelphia<\/a>. Postgame, Neely darted briefly to the dressing room, on a mission to congratulate Jeannot with a handshake and slap on the back. (Neely carries an informed opinion when it comes to throwing down.)<\/p>\n

The importance of fighting typically diminishes in the playoffs, but the compete battle only ratchets higher. The Jeannot-Kuraly-Kastelic trio \u2014 the \u201cPunch Line,\u201d perhaps? \u2014 could evolve as a key factor in grinding the gears of one of Buffalo\u2019s top two lines.<\/p>\n

Along the way, Swayman played into his \u201cfranchise goalie\u201d label. Pastrnak reached 100 points for the fourth consecutive time, and McAvoy, finally beginning to shoot more<\/a>, registered a career year for assists (50) and points (61). Sturm, blunt in assessing his players while perpetually upbeat, tied it all together.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a sense that, no matter what happens in the upcoming battle for 16 playoff W\u2019s, things are back on the road again for a franchise that just a little over a year ago was careening toward the ditch.<\/p>\n

Kevin Paul Dupont can be reached at kevin.dupont@globe.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In context, five other teams qualified for this season\u2019s playoffs after similarly falling outside of the structure last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[463,464],"tags":[530,5,4,60,14,104,718],"class_list":{"0":"post-554426","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl-playoffs","8":"category-stanley-cup-playoffs","9":"tag-bruins","10":"tag-hockey","11":"tag-nhl","12":"tag-nhl-playoffs","13":"tag-stanley-cup","14":"tag-stanley-cup-playoffs","15":"tag-stanley-cup-playoffs-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116419422818805451","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554426","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=554426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}