By: Eamonn McLean | Follow me on Twitter/X @EamonnMcLean44
The 2024-25 edition of the Boston Bruins seemed to struggle in most statistical categories. In net, Jeremy Swayman posted a .892% save percentage, the lowest of his National Hockey League career, while Joonas Korpisalo posted his second straight sub .900% season. On defense, the B’s allowed 271 goals, the seventh most in the NHL. They successfully killed 76.3% of their penalties, 24th in the league.
The Bruins struggled to keep the puck out of their net, but you could argue that scoring on the opponent’s goal was an even bigger challenge. They only scored 222 goals, the 28th most in the NHL. Their power play operated at an abysmally low 15.2%. In 41 of the team’s regular-season games this past year, the Bruins only managed to score two goals or fewer. The league average goals for per-game was 3.01. Boston must improve their offensive output if they want a chance to get back into the postseason next year.
Why The Offense Could Get Better
Boston took a chance on Swedish forward Viktor Arvidsson, acquiring him from the Edmonton Oilers in exchange for a 2027 fifth-round pick on July 1st. Arvidsson has scored 20 or more goals in a season on five separate occasions, including a career high 34 goals with the Nashville Predators in 2019. His biggest issue has been an inability to stay healthy. He has never played all 82 games in a regular season, and has played 80 games just once. Now 32, it’s unlikely that Arvidsson will hit the heights that he did with the Predators, but he did score 15 goals with the Oilers last season, a total that would have tied him for fifth on the Bruins last season.
They also took a flyer on Matej Blumel, a 25-year-old Czech winger who has lit up the American Hockey League with the Texas Stars the past two seasons. Blumel led the league in goals last year with 39 and also appeared in seven NHL games with Dallas, scoring a goal. Whether he will be able to earn a spot on the NHL roster in Boston remains to be seen, given the current bottom-six logjam. More on that later.
Blumel isn’t the only one leaving the Lone Star State for Boston. Steve Spott will be on the B’s coaching staff this season, in charge of coaching the team’s power play. This year will be Spott’s twelfth year coaching in the NHL, having previously worked in Toronto, San Jose, Vegas, and Dallas. This past year, Spott’s units in Dallas clicked at 22%, 17th in the NHL, and were even better in the playoffs at 32.08%. He should bring improvement to Boston’s struggling man advantage.
Elias Lindholm struggled for large parts of last season. However, the Boden, Sweden, native improved drastically down the stretch and took that momentum with him when he represented Team Sweden at the IIHF World Championships. It resulted in him posting 14 points in 10 games with his National Team, earning a Bronze Medal in the process. It can be hard to evaluate performances at a tournament like the Worlds, where a lot of countries best players are busy with their NHL teams in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. It can also be hard to put stock into games where players produce multiple points against teams whose best players aren’t NHL caliber players. That being said, Lindholm was in pretty good company production wise, tying for second in scoring at the tournament behind his Bruins teammate David Pastrnak. There’s reason to believe he could go from a 47 point player to a 55 to 60 point player next season.
Why The Offense Might Not Improve
While the three aforementioned additions may help, there have also been some important departures, none more significant than Brad Marchand. Traded at last season’s trade deadline to the Florida Panthers, even in a year where he battled significant injuries, Marchand still was one of only three players on the Bruins roster to score 20 or more goals last year, doing so in only 61 games.
The trade to Florida benefited both sides. The Bruins acquired a first-round pick for a depleted prospect pool that is slowly but surely beginning to improve, and Marchand was able to lift the Stanley Cup for the second time in his career, likely solidifying himself as a future Hall of Famer. But make no mistake, the Bruins will miss Marchand’s on-ice presence next season.
Morgan Geekie enjoyed a breakout campaign last season, recording a career-high 33 goals and 57 points. The Strathclair, Manitoba, native found success playing alongside David Pastrnak and Elias Lindholm towards the end of the season, resulting in Geekie being rewarded with a six-year, $33 million contract with the Bruins.
In addition to his goals and points, Geekie’s shooting percentage skyrocketed last season to 22.0%, up almost nine percentage points from his 13.1% mark the year prior, where he posted a previous career-high of 17 goals. While Geekie has improved significantly during his time in Boston, it’s not unfair to suspect that his shooting percentage may take a dip next year, perhaps closer to his career average of 14.6%. If Geekie’s production is to dip from 33 goals to perhaps 25, eight goals is a big number for a team that was starved for offense last year to make up.
In addition to the departure of their captain, Boston’s forward group is going through a major personnel shake-up. Charlie Coyle, Trent Frederic, Justin Brazeau, Jakub Lauko, and Cole Koepke departed the B’s either at the Trade Deadline or on July 1st. Meanwhile, Tanner Jeannot, Casey Mittelstadt, Marat Khusnutdinov, Sean Kuraly, Alex Steeves, and Michael Eyssimont, have all been brought in to the organization, while the Bruins elected to retain both Johnny Beecher, and Riley Tufte.
A native of Edina, Minnesota, Mittelstadt projects to fill a top-six role with the Bruins next season. Acquired from the Colorado Avalanche in the Coyle trade, Mittelstadt, has had success as a playmaker in the past. During the 2022-23 season, he recorded a career-high 44 assists, adding 15 goals for 59 points as a member of the Buffalo Sabres. He has the potential to help Boston produce more offense.
However, in 18 games with the B’s post-deadline, Mittelstadt recorded only two assists for six points, a point-per-game pace of 0.33, and had a -17 rating. Part of the problem may have been the lack of talent surrounding Mittelstadt after the deadline. Being on a line with someone like Viktor Arvidsson, could help him a lot. Regardless, whether the Bruins’ offense improves next season may hinge on whether he can return to form.
Boston’s premier free agent signing this summer was Tanner Jeannot. A native of Estevan, Saskatchewan, Jeannot spent last season with the Los Angeles Kings, where he recorded 13 points in 67 games and accumulated 89 penalty minutes. While Jeannot will likely bring a physical presence that the Bruins may not have had last season, he’s had an up-and-down couple of seasons. After a breakout 2021-22 campaign with Nashville that saw him score 24 goals in 81 games, Jeannot has only tallied 20 goals in 198 games since then. His seven goals LA last year, was less than what Koepke, Frederic, and Brazeau each brought to the table in that department last year.
The return of Kuraly from Columbus and the addition of Eyssimont give Boston two high-energy forwards for their bottom six, but, like Jeannot, while they bring value in other departments, they can’t be relied upon for offense. Kuraly scored six times for the Blue Jackets last season, while Eyssimont buried nine goals in 77 games with Seattle and Tampa Bay. These three aren’t bad players by any means, but one or two of them will likely be asked to fill top-nine roles given the Bruins abundance of fourth-line options.
A final reason why the Bruins’ offense might not improve next year is the logjam of bottom-six forwards on the roster, making it difficult for young players to earn spots on this team out of training camp. The Bruins have several young players who have produced points in the past in the AHL. Matthew Poitras scored 41 points in 40 games with Providence last year. After turning pro at the end of the year, Dans Locmelis recorded 12 points in six games with the P-Bruins. Georgii Merkulov lead the P-Bruins in scoring with 54 points, while Fabian Lysell and Fraser Minten showed flashes of potential in trials with the big club at the end of the season.
Boston’s problem isn’t that they don’t have players who could fill NHL roles; it’s that they simply aren’t giving them room to do so. For any of the players mentioned above to make the opening night lineup, and assuming that Pastrnak, Zacha, Lindholm, Geekie, Jeannot, Mittelstadt, Arvidsson, Kuraly, Eyssimont, and Kastelic are healthy, they will need to beat out a group of candidates that includes, Johnny Beecher, Marat Khusnutdinov, Matej Blumel, Alex Steeves, Riley Tufte, Jeffrey Viel, Patrick Brown, John Farinacci, Riley Duran, as well as each other and players who may be offered professional tryout opportunities closer to the start of training camp. It’s not that they can’t do it, it’s that they might never get a chance to truly show if they can.
Overall Thoughts
The facts are that Boston’s team offensive metrics last season were nothing short of abysmal. Too often, they struggled to generate offense from anyone other than David Pastrnak or Morgan Geekie. At five-on-five, I’m not sure how much they’ll improve if at all, but I do see a path to improvement on the man advantage.
Getting Steve Spott on board should help. Boston’s power play was too predictable last season, and a lack of in-game adjustments was evident. The Bruins might not have the scoring depth of an elite team, but they do have high-end talent. A power play unit featuring David Pastrnak, a player you can write in each year for 40 or more goals if he’s healthy, should not be the fourth-worst in the league.
My overall verdict? I think Boston’s offense will slightly improve next season. The power play will bounce back towards league average, while their even-strength metrics remain about the same, possibly improving slightly, given the new system that will be in place under Marco Sturm. It’s also possible that it may take the team a while to get used to these new systems, and as a result improvement takes some time. I do think they’ll be better as a whole though, they’ve got too much high-end talent to be a bottom-five team in the league again.
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