By: Tom Calautti | Follow me on Twitter @TCalauttis
For a minute there, things were finally starting to look up for the Boston Bruins. Morale was high amongst fans following the NHL Draft when James Hagens fell to them at seventh overall, top prospect Will Zellers made his first appearance at Development Camp, and the team had approximately $12 million to upgrade their roster in free agency. Then the hammer dropped.
General Manager Don Sweeney was plenty busy on the first day of free agency, signing nine different skaters and acquiring another via trade. The 2025-26 roster will undoubtedly look different, but the real question is:
Will they be any better?
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Trade Scoring for Snarl
Last season was an unmitigated disaster for the Boston Bruins. After riding into the season with lofty expectations, the 2024-25 squad came up woefully short of their goals and finished as one of the five worst teams in hockey.
Several factors contributed to Boston’s demise, including injuries, coaching turmoil, and overall regression. But it’s no secret that one of the Black and Gold’s most significant issues was their inability to find the back of the net and generate consistent offense.
The Bruins ranked 28th in both goals for and goals per game and 29th in power-play percentage. Even producing shots on net was a problem for Boston, as they were the fourth-worst team in the league in shots on goal per game.
Upgrading the team’s offensive talent was paramount to their offseason plans. So paramount, in fact, that Sweeney made a point to highlight it during his end-of-year press conference.
“I think the scoring potential of our group needs to be increased and addressed this summer,” said Sweeney while addressing the media. “We need to get back to the competitive level, to speed.”
His first move yesterday was a step in the right direction. He traded a future fifth-round pick in exchange for 32-year-old Viktor Arvidsson. The Swedish winger has five 20+ goal seasons and seven 15+ goal seasons across his 11-year career—a solid middle-six forward on an expiring deal that costs nothing and upgrades your scoring.
From there, the transactions became increasingly puzzling. Sweeney locked up bottom-six staples Tanner Jeannot, Mikey Eyssimont, and Sean Kuraly. Last season, that trio combined for 22-24-48 in TOTAL, barely enough to replace the scoring hole left by the trade of Brad Marchand (21-26-47 in 61 games for Boston).
Sweeney highlighted the intangibles and play style that these three will bring to the table when asked about the acquisitions. He made sure to point out that the emotion and intensity they bring to the locker room every day will be a massive help for this roster.
“We were at times last year…an easy out,” said Sweeney. “And I just, I can’t stand for that. So we are going to reestablish that.”
I agree with the point that Boston was an easy out last season. More times than I can count, we watched the team surrender a flurry of goals in quick succession that demoralized the group and effectively took them out of games. But is adding more snarl and grit the remedy to that problem? And, more importantly, does it address the need for ‘increased scoring potential’ that Sweeney himself identified at the end of the season?
Boston attempted to bolster their roster to match the grit of the Florida Panthers by adding Nikita Zadorov and Mark Kastelic, but it didn’t work. Their inability to keep up with Florida (and other top teams) from a talent perspective eventually sank them.
After yesterday’s free agent frenzy, it seems like Sweeney is ‘returning the well’ and relying on intangibles and play style to supplement real, concrete skill and talent.
Stifling Young Talent
The surge of bottom-six signings also begs another question: where do the younger skaters fit on this team? For the first time in a (very) long time, the Bruins gave their youth some runway at the end of the season. Guys like Fabian Lysell, Marat Khusnutdinov, and Fraser Minten got the chance to prove their mettle at the NHL level once the team blew things up at the deadline.
But with the roster currently clogged with bottom-six veterans, does that now force the youth out of the equation? The Bruins currently have nine forwards under 25 years of age fighting for increased ice time:
One of the main reasons new head coach Marco Sturm entered the fold was his background in player development. Sweeney himself acknowledged that the organization is looking for its younger guys to prove their NHL readiness.
“(Sturm) has been part of player development, so he knows that path and what it takes to make those steps, so he can challenge whoever it’s going to be,” said Sweeney during Sturm’s introductory press conference. “Pick a player, whether it’s [Matt] Poitras or whether it’s [Fraser] Minten. It doesn’t matter. Take that player in those situations…and then stepping back to see them take the jump.”
With Jeannot, Eyssimont, and Kuraly now joining an already crowded bottom-six, the Bruins are already preparing to ship their youth back to the AHL and watch their development from a state away. Even if the team were to falter again this season, wouldn’t it make more sense to give your youth room to grow, rather than stifling them with placeholders?
Yesterday’s free agent blitz left me more puzzled than upset. Perhaps management has already written this off as a bridge year and is just hoping for health and improved goaltending to sneak them back into the playoffs. Maybe the market drying up and Brock Boeser returning to Vancouver took their only real option off the board.
No matter how you look at it, the plan doesn’t make any sense. This season was supposed to be a one-off. We were told the Bruins were selling at the deadline so they could reset their roster, acquire assets, and utilize that draft and prospect capital to add talent. In addition, we were informed that there would be a greater emphasis on developing their young talent to complement the rest of their core.
After yesterday, it’s difficult to see that plan being executed this season, and it’s even more challenging to see the vision. Maybe this roster will improve defensively and sneak into the playoffs, but right now it’s hard to envision them being what Sweeney advertised at the end of the season.
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