Are the Bruins going to be any good this season? That’s the question I’ve heard the most over the last couple weeks in the leadup to Wednesday’s opening night.
The Skate Podcast Bruins Season Preview
Truthfully, I don’t know. At the very least, it would be pretty shocking if they’re a Stanley Cup contender. But if you accept that as a starting point, then what would make this a “good” season?
Can the Bruins make the playoffs? Can they at least be in the hunt and playing meaningful games late in the season? That would certainly be an encouraging step after last year’s abject disaster. It would suggest that Marco Sturm is the right coach, that the team’s culture and structure have been re-established, that some guys who needed bounce-back seasons got them, and that a few other players probably had breakout seasons.
Boston's players clearly believe it is possible. Proving the doubters wrong was a theme in training camp, echoed across more than a couple media scrums and press conferences.
The doubters could also be right, though. This team that ranked 28th in scoring last season did not make any significant offensive additions this offseason. If the defense and goaltending do not bounce back to the extent the organization expects, another bottom-10 or even bottom-five finish in the league is in play.
With that in mind, here are five key areas on which the Bruins’ 2025-26 season will hinge:
Jeremy Swayman
Swayman needs to be a lot better than last season if the Bruins are going to make any noise whatsoever. There’s just no way around it.
Swayman is the fourth-highest-paid goalie in the NHL after signing a massive eight-year, $66 million contract right before opening night last season. He did not play like a top-five goalie in Year 1 of that deal.
Swayman made a career-high 58 starts, but went 22-29-7 with an .892 save percentage and 3.11 goals-against average. Sure, he did not get nearly enough help from the team in front of him. But advanced metrics that better judge individual performance didn’t paint any prettier a picture: Among 45 goalies who played at least 30 games, Swayman ranked 39th in goals saved above expected, according to MoneyPuck.
We can rehash the contentious contract negotiations and Swayman missing all of training camp and how all that might have affected him, but none of it really matters now. Swayman was in camp this year. He’s healthy. He says he’s “a completely different human being.” He played great for Team USA at the World Championships. He finished the preseason strong on Saturday against the Rangers.
The excuses, at least at the individual level, are gone. The Bruins need Swayman to be a top-10 goalie. If he is, then the Bruins have a good chance to exceed expectations, and last season can be forgiven and forgotten. If he struggles again, though, then it’s probably going to be another long season, and there are going to be some really uncomfortable questions moving forward for all parties involved.
Team defense
The Bruins’ 5-on-5 defense wasn’t actually as bad as you might think last season. They finished middle of the pack in shots, scoring chances, high-danger chances and expected goals against. The goaltending didn’t help, and things did fall off after Charlie McAvoy’s season-ending injury in February and the trade deadline firesale on March 7.
Still, middle of the pack defense won’t be good enough for a team that has so many offensive question marks. If the Bruins are going to have any shot at pushing for a playoff spot, the defense needs to be a real strength, and that means top 10 in the NHL.
The penalty kill also needs to be a lot better after finishing bottom-10 in the league last year. It was a bit shaky in the preseason, giving up a few too many grade-A chances in close as Sturm implements a new system and tries to incorporate some players who don’t have a ton of PK experience.
The pieces are certainly there for defensive improvement. McAvoy is back and healthy. So, too, is Hampus Lindholm, who missed all but the first 17 games last season. Up front, the Bruins expect their third and fourth lines to be grittier and “harder to play against” – another theme that has been preached up and down the organization since the summer.
After some rough moments early in the preseason, the Bruins did look much more structured defensively by the end. But part of playing good defense is playing good offense – possessing the puck in the offensive zone and keeping teams far away from your net. If the Bruins can’t do that with any regularity, their defense could still break under duress even if they are structured.
The second line
The Bruins’ first line of David Pastrnak, Morgan Geekie and Elias Lindholm should be good, and possibly great. In 94 5-on-5 minutes with that trio on the ice last season, the Bruins outscored opponents 16-4 and had an expected goals share of 64.3%.
But you can’t win consistently in the NHL with just one line scoring. The Bruins desperately need a second line, and that’s where the questions up front start.
Sturm is going to open the season with Casey Mittelstadt centering Pavel Zacha and Viktor Arvidsson. All three are coming off down seasons. Mittelstadt and Zacha were both knocking on the door of 60 points in 2022-23 and 2023-24, but Mittelstadt plummeted to 40 points last year in a season split between Colorado and Boston, and Zacha dropped to 47. Arvidsson, a two-time 30-goal scorer earlier in his career, never found his footing in Edmonton and mustered just 15 goals and 27 points in 67 games last year.
With a bottom six that’s skewed towards defense and physicality, this second line needs to score – and they need to score without giving it back at the other end.
There’s basically three ways it can go with this group: They’re good, the Bruins make a playoff push, and they all stick around as solid middle-six options moving forward. They’re good, the Bruins are still not a playoff team, and they have three nice trade chips if they sell again at the deadline. They’re bad, the Bruins are bad, and the team is just kind of stuck with them. Zacha and Mittelstadt each have another year on their contract after this, while Arvidsson is a free agent after the season.
The power play
As we’ve already established, the Bruins need to score more. One place they can make up a lot of ground is on the power play. They have a lot of room for improvement after finishing fourth-worst in the NHL at 15.2% last season.
Sturm brought in veteran assistant Steve Spott to run the power play, a job he has done successfully in San Jose, Vegas and, most recently, Dallas. They have spent quite a bit of time on it in training camp, including Spott and the top power-play unit jumping on the ice before the rest of the team on a couple occasions. There has been a heavy focus on full-ice practice for breakouts and entries, something the Bruins did shockingly little of in practice last year.
While the Bruins aren’t exactly loaded with offensive talent, they certainly have enough to at least have a strong top unit. In practice, it’s been Charlie McAvoy at the point, Pavel Zacha net-front, Elias Lindholm in the bumper, and David Pastrnak and Morgan Geekie on the flanks, frequently flipping sides. Mind you, those guys were all around last season as well (or at least most of it in McAvoy’s case). That’s where you hope that better coaching and some renewed pride in being a strength, not a weakness, lead to better results.
The Bruins’ second power-play unit, for what it’s worth, has been Hampus Lindholm at the point, Viktor Arvidsson net-front, Casey Mittelstadt in the bumper, Mason Lohrei on the left elbow, and Marat Khusnutdinov on the right. Matej Blumel and Matt Poitras also saw PP2 time in camp, but neither made the opening-night roster.
The young guys
The Bruins need to start finding more young players who can be core pieces for them moving forward. Their opening night lineup is light on possibilities, with Fraser Minten a notable exception. Acquired from Toronto in the Brandon Carlo trade, the 21-year-old Minten won the Bruins’ third-line center job to start the season, and they hope that’s where he’ll remain for the foreseeable future.
Mittelstadt, at 26, could qualify, depending on your definition of “young.” Regardless, the Bruins would certainly like for him to prove he can be part of the solution moving forward. 24-year-old defenseman Mason Lohrei signed a two-year bridge deal this offseason. He will start the season paired with McAvoy, but whether he stays there and establishes himself as a legitimate top-four defenseman will be decided by how much he improves defensively.
Several of the Bruins’ best prospects are still in college, led by 2025 seventh overall pick James Hagens at Boston College. We may very well see Hagens with the Bruins after BC’s season ends in the spring.
Others are in the AHL with the Providence Bruins. Matt Poitras will start there after not quite doing enough to make the big club out of camp. He may very well still have a role to play in Boston at some point this season, especially if the team needs more offensive creativity.
Matej Blumel and Alex Steeves, both 25, will also start in Providence. They were the AHL’s top two goal-scorers a season ago and were brought to Boston in the hopes that they might be ready to score in the NHL. That won’t happen yet, but don’t rule out one or both getting looks as the season goes on.
Other players to watch in Providence include forwards Fabian Lysell, Georgii Merkulov and Dans Locmelis, and defenseman Frederic Brunet. For Lysell and Merkulov, it’s pretty darn close to make-or-break time. Both already have three full AHL seasons under their belt, but still couldn’t break camp with the varsity squad.
Locmelis just turned pro at the end of last season and made an immediate impact with 12 points in six AHL regular-season games. The 21-year-old UMass product has steadily risen in prospect rankings and may very well have middle-six upside. You could see him play NHL games at some point this season.
Same goes for Brunet, a 22-year-old left-shot defenseman. He had a strong camp and was probably one of the Bruins’ top seven or eight D. Being an extra body in Boston wouldn’t be good for his development, though, so he’ll play big minutes in Providence instead. He could very well be first or second in the call-up line in the event of injury.
Official season prediction: As revealed on our Skate Podcast season preview (listen above), I have the Bruins finishing seventh in the Atlantic Division with 81 points, missing the playoffs, and getting another top-10 pick.