BRIGHTON – It was abundantly clear based on the moves made this week, and the sad country-western song that has been this Bruins hockey season, that significant and swift change was in the offing for the Black and Gold ahead of Friday afternoon’s NHL trade deadline.
On Friday alone, Charlie Coyle, Brandon Carlo and captain Brad Marchand were dealt away in a series of dizzying moves, and they joined Trent Frederic and Justin Brazeau also shipped out in the days leading up to deadline. The trades sent away three players that had played a whopping 2,159 games for the Black and Gold, including a likely Hall of Famer and 2011 Stanley Cup champion in Marchand along with longtime core team members in Coyle and Carlo.
#NHLBruins Trades
— Dan Roche (@RochieWBZ) March 7, 2025
Departing
F Marchand
D Carlo
C Coyle
F Frederic
F Jones
F Brazeau
'26 5th rd pick
Acquired
D Jokiharju
F Minten
C Mittelstadt
F Zellers
F Khusnutdinov
F Lauko
D Wanner
‘25 1st
'25 2nd
'25 2nd
'26 4th
'26 6th
‘27 2nd(conditional)@NHLBruins @wbz
The 36-year-old Marchand was dealt 24 points short of reaching 1,000 in his illustrious career with the Bruins and abruptly ends the captain’s hope he would spend his entire NHL career with the B’s, just as his best buddy Patrice Bergeron had done.
But it wasn’t to be the case for Marchand, who was shockingly traded to the Florida Panthers for a 2017 conditional second-round pick that will turn into a first-rounder if the left winger plays in 50 percent of Florida’s Stanley Cup playoff games AND the Panthers win at least two playoff rounds. The two sides discussed a contract extension all the way down to the Friday afternoon deadline but couldn’t find common ground even after they were able to bridge the contract term gap.
“That one goes back and cuts deeper than any other player that I’ve had the privilege to get to know, and [that I] watched thrive and become a Hall of Famer and one of the greatest Bruins ever,” said Don Sweeney. “A difficult day from that standpoint personally and professionally where we had to make some really difficult decisions.
“Had we done our jobs [with the Bruins] and had I done my job appropriately, we would be adding [at the deadline] like we intended to this year. [But] you have to take a step back approach at times. The message is clearly that we didn’t burn it down. We have some guys, particularly some that are injured, that are big, big pieces for our group. Now we have to do a better job of building around it and charting a course that says ‘we’re back.’ And that’s the job.”
The time I had to beat him in a game of rock, paper & scissors to get him to talk to group of reporters after a Bruins practice. Gonna miss that Little Ball of Hate! He was 1 out of 1 in every way. Great player. Fun person. Always so great w/kids visiting the Bruins dressing room https://t.co/InklLelTji
— Joe Haggerty (@HackswithHaggs) March 8, 2025
Sweeney lauded both Coyle and Carlo for their empathetic nature and their outstanding longtime on-ice service to the Bruins and wished them well as they moved along to the Avalanche (for skilled center Casey Mittelstadt, a 2025 second round pick and a left wing prospect William Zellers) and Maple Leafs (for Fraser Minten, a 2026 first round pick and a 2025 fourth round pick) respectively.
Full credit to Sweeney that he got a boatload of assets for the Bruins players that are now moving on.
“Charlie Coyle is another hometown favorite and a key cog in what we came so close to executing [a Cup win] in 2019, and all the years that he’s been here. Off the ice in the community and his involvement, I can’t say enough about what he had done,” said Sweeney. “Brandon in a similar fashion with a similar personality, both of those two guys filled with the kind of empathy you would admire in your own kids if you would be so lucky to have it. Brandon has been just a great teammate and a great player for us. I was there for his draft and surprising everybody since Day One when he came in and won an [NHL] job.”
That doesn’t even count the second-round pick, two NHL forwards and sixth-round pick that the Bruins acquired for Trent Frederic and Justin Brazeau in the last few days as well. The flurry of moves replenishes a slew of draft picks the Bruins had dealt away in recent years, augments a prospect pool that’s thinned over the last year and begins changing an NHL team mix that clearly underperformed this season.
Sweeney and the B’s brass had seen enough even before Thursday night’s heartbreaking loss in Carolina, and smartly didn’t use some major injuries as an excuse to run it back with a core group that flat out wasn’t good enough. The countless late, blown third-period leads and languishing at the bottom of the NHL in most statistical categories were clear indicators that things needed to change, as was a power play that’s been a major team weakness all season long.
The Bruins GM recognized all of this and made sweeping, bold moves to begin to address the myriad problems.
“Our power play has struggled all year and that’s a problem, and we have to address it,” admitted Sweeney. “That’s both the personnel and systematically maybe where we need to make adjustments there. [The PP struggles] had put stress on our overall offensive game, which we knew that was going to be potentially challenged if we didn’t stay healthy. Defensively is where the concern came into play where we just haven’t been as tight as we’ve been in the past. Good teams get through that and win in those [close] situations and we have given it up in those situations [this season]. Going back to the Rangers game, Vegas, the comeback [against] Toronto…those are big-time momentum swings where you are firmly in the playoff hunt at that time as you try to carry out and execute that.
“And we were unable to do that. So there are areas where we had underperformance and roster issues that we needed to address, and that starts with me. And the other [factor] is that the players need to take responsibility, and they have taken ownership of that. We weren’t going to just roll it back. We needed to turn a page in some regard and do a better job, and that’s what we are going to do.”
Still, the magnitude of trades also speaks to perhaps a shakeup in leadership being needed with the team captain stunningly shipped away to a divisional rival that’s eliminated them in the playoffs two years running, and two key veteran leaders dealt away to contenders as well. When a coaching change happens 20 games into the season and it doesn’t produce lasting change, then significant roster alterations are the next step in fixing chronic problems.
“We have to be very realistic and honest with ourselves that we have shaken up the leadership of what this group has been and how we’ve gone along. We have done that,” said Sweeney. “Now we are hellbent on finding people that can complement that and the internal growth of players that are here.
“They’ve been on the cusp of that and on the interior of that. Charlie [McAvoy] and David [Pastrnak] are the two most prime examples. We can’t overload them and how do we support them? I talked with both guys today. [Kevin] Shattenkirk and [James] van Riemsdyk both did a really good job last year and we have to be honest with ourselves about how we can improve in that way as an organization. It’s been a strength of ours. Whether we did a good enough job [providing support leadership] or whether injuries were a part of the situation and with Linus [Ullmark] leaving, all of those were new dynamics and we had to learn from them in order to do a better job.”
The big question now is how high the confidence index is in Cam Neely, Sweeney and this current Bruins management group armed now with a bevy of draft picks and prospects while burdened with the challenge of retooling the current remaining core group. It’s not going to be easy, and there are going to be bumps along the way, but the Bruins can’t afford a lot of missteps now coming off a season where countless things went wrong.
Doing all this amidst the backdrop of B’s fans getting restless while ticket prices keep rising while the product on the ice hasn’t matched that, it is not going to be easy. But the Bruins made the important first step in ripping off the Band-Aid, diagnosing the problem and going about starting to solve the issues as they embark on the challenging road of improving a flawed NHL roster on the fly.