Bruins' first-round exit exposed flaws that need addressing

"I think that we have a lot to be proud of, and definitely a lot to work on, too."

That's what Bruins goalie Jeremy Swayman said late Friday night, shortly after Boston's season had come to an end with a 4-1 loss to the Buffalo Sabres in Game 6 at TD Garden.

It is a perfect summary of where the Bruins are as they now enter the 2026 offseason. They do have a lot to be proud of. After finishing with the fifth-worst record in the NHL a year ago, they engineered a 24-point improvement, had a 100-point season, and returned to the playoffs with a roster that looks very different than the one they had just two years ago when they were last in the postseason.

Swayman himself had a massive bounce-back season, earning recognition as a Vezina Trophy finalist. New coach Marco Sturm and the team's leadership re-established a culture of hard work and toughness that had slipped. Youngsters Fraser Minten and Marat Khusnutdinov emerged as key middle-of-the-roster players. Morgan Geekie and Pavel Zacha had career years. Viktor Arvidsson and Casey Mittelstadt got their careers back on track. Jonathan Aspirot became an NHL mainstay after six years of toiling in the AHL. James Hagens, the exciting seventh overall pick from last summer, joined the mix late and should be a regular moving forward.

The team and organization also have a lot to work on, though. Many of their flaws got exposed in this first-round exit.

For starters, their offense went silent over the final four games of the series, scoring just one goal in regulation in each game. Arvidsson missing the final two games, plus most of Game 4, with an upper-body injury didn't help, but that's only part of the story.

Boston's top players just didn't produce enough. David Pastrnak scored the Bruins' final two goals of the series, but had gone 10 periods without a point prior to his overtime winner in Game 5. He was also minus-5 at 5-on-5 play over the final four games. Charlie McAvoy was a minus-4 with one point. Zacha and Elias Lindholm were both minus-3 with one point. Geekie and Mittelstadt had zero points in the final four games. Minten and Khusnutdinov had zero points all series. None of the revolving door of third-line wingers – Hagens, Alex Steeves, Mikey Eyssimont, Lukas Reichel – had a point in the series.

The Bruins were one of the best finishing teams in the NHL in the regular season, but that touch or luck or whatever you want to call it ran out as this series went on. Sturm saw a team that didn't get to the areas you need to get to in order to score in the playoffs.

"If you look around the playoffs now, how goals get scored, it's everything is in the paint," Sturm said. "For some reason we didn't get there, and we didn't get those garbage goals we needed at this time of year."

At the other end of the ice, the Bruins didn't make it hard enough for the Sabres to get there. According to Natural Stat Trick, Boston surrendered the most scoring chances and most high-danger chances of any team in the first round. They struggled mightily to exit their zone cleanly, with turnovers leading to too many transition chances against and too many extended sequences of scrambling D-zone coverage.

That was a problem all year. In the regular season, the Bruins allowed the sixth-most scoring chances and fourth-most high-danger chances in the league. No playoff team gave up more. Swayman covered up a lot of those breakdowns in the regular season, but the dam could only hold for so long in the playoffs against a dangerous offense like Buffalo's.

Some of that is on the coaching and players, for sure. Sturm's system, which was expected to usher in a return to stout defense, may need some tweaking. The Bruins often looked too tentative offensively, especially in the playoffs. The hybrid defensive-zone scheme broke down too often if one player lost his man.

A lot of it is also on the personnel, though. General manager Don Sweeney has made a bunch of good moves over the last year-plus while hitting the reset button, but now his challenge will be finding high-impact players who can help elevate this team to true contender status.

Pastrnak, McAvoy and Swayman remains a foundation many GMs would kill to have. But this isn't the NBA. You don't win Stanley Cups with a "big three." You need more high-end core pieces around them.

Most notably, the Bruins still didn't have a true No. 1 center this season, something virtually every Stanley Cup winner in recent history has had. Zacha, playing the way he did this season, is a good No. 2. Elias Lindholm might not even be that anymore. It's now been three years since his last 50-point season, and at 31 years old, the Bruins may just be stuck with a $7.75 million third-line center for the next five years.

Minten had a strong rookie season overall, but his offense really faded down the stretch (six points in the final 27 regular-season games, followed by zero points in the playoffs). Does he have top-six upside? Or is he best-suited remaining a 3C? (Which is still very valuable, by the way!)

Obviously, the Bruins' hope is that Hagens develops into that true 1C. That would be the kind of thing that could really make this retool-on-the-fly take off. But what if Hagens tops out as a 2C? Or what if he's better on the wing than at center? It's an uncomfortable question to ponder given how difficult it is to acquire elite centers without just bottoming out and getting a top two or three pick.

And the Bruins aren't doing that, because they're trying to cash in during the prime years of Pastrnak, McAvoy and Swayman. As Pastrnak pointed out Friday night, he is about to turn 30.

"Of course it’s disappointing," Pastrnak said of the season ending. "I’m turning 30 in a couple weeks. Had one sniff at the Cup so far. It gets harder every single year. … You don’t want to waste any opportunity."

Sweeney might not need to trade away premium assets and start going "all-in" again just yet. Pastrnak is very much still in his prime, and McAvoy and Swayman are younger than that. But make no mistake: the clock is ticking.

The Bruins took a big step forward this season. They can and should be proud of that. They still need to take more steps, though, and that will require a lot of work.