On the good days, it looks like the Boston Bruins might still be a Stanley Cup playoff team capable of getting into the postseason dance where anything can happen.
But on bad hockey nights like Wednesday evening in New Jersey, it looks and feels like the B’s are far from being postseason caliber in any realistic way. Unfortunately, it feels like there have been more bad days than good as of late for the Black and Gold.
The Bruins had a slim 1-0 lead after the opening 20 minutes, but as has happened so many times this season things completely fell apart for the Black and Gold as they surrendered three PP goals and five unanswered scores in a 5-1 loss to New Jersey at the Prudential Center. This happened despite Jeremy Swayman standing on his head in the second period and making a series of big-time saves while the B’s were trapped in their zone for a four-minute stretch in the decisive middle stanza of Wednesday night’s loss.
Instead of utilizing the momentum of surviving that Devils onslaught, though, the Bruins up and crumbled for the remainder of the second period.
Stefan Noesen scored a puck luck PP goal after a Charlie Coyle hooking penalty and 12 seconds later a Mason Lohrei turnover turned into a Dawson Mercer slot shot that essentially buried the Black and Gold. Game over at that point.
“I don’t think our execution has been there,” said Morgan Geekie, who had the only goal of the game for the B’s in his 300th NHL contest. “We’re trying to find an answer and what we are doing isn’t good enough. We know it. It’s embarrassing frankly, the way we are letting these games slip away from us.”
The Bruins are 4-8-1 in the 13 games since the Christmas holiday break and continue to drop games against above-average competition.
The three power-play goals allowed, the seven penalties taken and getting outshot 35-23 by the Devils looked a lot like the sad Bruins bunch that got Jim Montgomery fired after the opening 20 games of the regular season. Wednesday night’s loss dropped the Bruins to 9-14-3 this season against teams currently in the playoff structure while being outscored 70-to-106 in those games for a whopping minus-36 goal differential during those regular-season meetings.
That spells all kinds of trouble should the Bruins sneak into the playoffs at this point and the B’s players seem to know their confidence is fragile right now.
“When you’re winning and you aren’t thinking, you are just playing the right way and then sometimes when you lose a few in a row, you’re overthinking things and not playing the right way,” said Coyle. “It’s a big mental game and we have to make sure we’re always right [mentally] because that controls the physical part of it.”
At this point, the evidence is mounting that perhaps the Bruins need to think about taking path of being a seller at the NHL trade deadline. Bruins President Cam Neely discussed both options as an in-season consideration during the Black and Gold Gala last week, and it feels like this B’s team might be best served by making changes that are a little more significant than adding depth or addressing a single roster weakness.
“I think, right now, we’ve got to look at two paths: one that we’re buying and one that we may just be retooling a little bit,” said Neely prior to the Bruins Foundation event last week. “We still feel like we’ve got a playoff team here and we certainly don’t want to jeopardize getting out of the playoffs because we made some moves that may be good for the future, but not good for the present.”
"We've gone all-in a number of times over the last 10 years, and rightfully so. We have to be smart. If you do it again, you have to know you're a team that has a good chance to have a deep run. You don't want to go all-in and not feel confident you're going to have a deep run."
"I think right now we've got to look at two paths. One that we're buying and one that we may be retooling a little bit."#NHLBruins President Cam Neely offered insight into the upcoming trade deadline decision 👀 pic.twitter.com/MO227gwKyf
— NESN (@NESN) January 16, 2025
It's kind of stunning to hear Bruins management acknowledge possibly selling assets when they haven’t really actively been a seller since dealing off Jumbo Joe Thornton 20 years ago, but the reality is that the B’s appear to be taking the step back everybody was anticipating for the organization over the last handful of years as they continuously lost Hall of Fame-level players and leaders in Zdeno Chara, Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci.
One would expect that looming UFA Trent Frederic would be a name that’s going to garner a lot of interest on the trade market, and there is good reason that he is currently sitting at No. 9 on the TSN trade bait board. Frederic would net, at the very least, a valuable draft pick and/or prospect as a power forward rental, even in a down season where he hasn’t consistently been as good as in year’s past.
The biggest question is whether more losses like Wednesday night might broaden Boston’s “retooling” scope and cause them to entertain dealing veteran players with term, guys like Brandon Carlo and Charlie Coyle that could yield interest on the open market. Perhaps those kinds of pieces would be utilized in a trade for disgruntled Vancouver Canucks center JT Miller, who is looking for a change of scenery amidst some personality squabbles inside the Canucks dressing room.
A retooling for the Black and Gold could cause the Bruins to entertain some potentially bold changes to their roster, but it feels like those might need to happen for a hockey team unable to get out of their own way this season. The chemistry feels more disjointed than it’s been in a long time, the consistency just isn’t there game-to-game and there are some real issues – like a big money, long term contract for a player in Elias Lindholm that has really, really struggled to be what the Bruins expected him to be – to be grappled with as far as the long term picture goes for the Bruins.
An analysis as to how, and why, things have been so disappointing with Lindholm is going to be necessary as the Bruins are going to have a hard time finding anybody that will take that contract.
Add in the current injuries to important Bruins players like Hampus Lindholm, Charlie McAvoy and Mark Kastelic, and it’s starting to feel more and more like a bit of a lost season for a B’s group that’s unable to keep it together. It’s not going to be an easy sell to a Bruins fan base paying top dollar to see a competitive team worthy of playoff hockey, but a true, clear-eyed evaluation of the roster and an active collection of future assets might be the most prudent path forward for a hockey club that has looked lost, as they did in Wednesday’s loss, most nights this season.