There’s really not much more that can be said at this point in a lost year about a Bruins team playing out the string for the rest of this hockey season.
After a last gasp surge where they won a pair of games coming out of the NHL trade deadline once cages were rattled with stunning trades of longtime veterans Brad Marchand, Charlie Coyle and Brandon Carlo, the Bruins have dropped three in a row and the door feels completely shut on any playoff hopes.
Reality seems to have set in for the group after defeats at the hands of the Senators, Lightning and Sabres, and there isn’t a ton of emotion, energy or enthusiasm within a hockey club trying to put together professional efforts to close out the year. The overall effort was better on Monday night against the Buffalo Sabres after an embarrassing game over the weekend against the Lightning, but the result was still a 3-2 overtime loss to a Sabres team also going through the perfunctory motions at this point in the year.
Joe Sacco said he liked the energy and the morale was satisfactory, but there’s really no point in the interim head coach indicating otherwise with 13 games remaining in the regular season. Instead, it’s about trying to coax a rag tag group into playing their best together as a newly formed group and becoming a tough out for other teams while building toward an important crossroads-type of offseason for the Black and Gold.
“I thought we had good energy tonight,” said Sacco. “On the bench, in the room before the game, I thought that the guys were focused. I don’t think [low morale] has been an issue at all. If anything, sometimes we’re maybe trying to do too much at times.
“The biggest thing for us to focus on is just there’s a process that we try to follow each game and there’s a standard that we’re trying to uphold regardless of where we’re at.”
The energy in the Bruins dressing room after the game really told the story, however. The Bruins players looked tired and out-of-answers while frustrated with the unsatisfactory results, but also fully understanding that the expectations ceiling is lower for this current group of hockey players than it was prior to the NHL trade deadline.
“It could have gone either way. Today was a tight game. We made some mistakes and didn’t get many power play opportunities,” said David Pastrnak. “A good effort from our group, but a very frustrating loss. Tough one.
“We have work to do. We’re trying to build with every game. The effort was there today. We played overall a much better game than the last game [against Tampa Bay], so I guess we can build from that. We just need to be better. We’re going on a heavy West Coast trip, so if we’re not going to show up with the effort and hard work ethic then it’s not going to be pretty.”
The question now becomes whether the Bruins would be better off working younger players into the mix for the remainder of this season. Fraser Minten was a valued prospect acquired from the Toronto Maple Leafs in the Brandon Carlo, and he wheeled off a natural hat trick for the Providence Bruins last weekend while Oliver Wahlstrom has scored at a regular clip for the P-Bruins as well.
Now playing: Fraser Minten's afternoon hat trick🎬️🍿@AHLBruins | #PROvsSPR pic.twitter.com/UF1HZqmJAl
— American Hockey League (@TheAHL) March 17, 2025
Perhaps it’s better to let players like Minten, Fabian Lysell, Georgii Merkulov and Matt Poitras thrive in a competitive P-Bruins atmosphere where that team is still playing for something, but the Black and Gold also need to get an NHL read on players like Minten and Lysell even if they’ve already gathered opinions about other players with longer NHL stints.
That’s perhaps why the Bruins announced on Tuesday morning that both Lysell and hard-working, blue collar defenseman Michael Callahan had been called up from Providence ahead of their long road swing out West. Nobody thinks that Lysell is going to be a savior or that any of these young players are going to reverse course for an Original Six franchise going in the wrong direction right now, but the B's decision makers need NHL looks for these players to properly evaluate them as assets.
Sacco indicated that players will get NHL looks when it’s appropriate and deserved, but it remains to be seen how that is going to play out in the final month of a regular season that’s essentially one step away from exhibition hockey on Causeway Street.
One thing that definitely needs to change is the Bruins being more willing to shoot the puck. They were held to under 20 shots on net for the second straight game, and again went long stretches without a shot in Monday night’s game after getting outshot by an embarrassing 21-0 margin in the second period of last weekend’s loss to the Bolts.
“I think we need to have a shoot-first mentality, and sometimes we get away from that,” said Geekie, who scored his 23rd goal of the season in Monday night’s loss. “Especially, we get a few chances that come off a few nice plays and then we forget that if we play off the shot, that’s where lots of things happen.
“Just getting back to basics, a little more meat-and-potatoes mindset when it comes to the O-zone will definitely help in that category. You can’t score if you don’t shoot.”
Perhaps Lysell can contribute a bit to more of a shooting mentality for the struggling Black and Gold offense, and certainly Callahan deserves another look after he played some solid stay-at-home defensemen earlier this season.
The remaining 13 games for this NHL season for the Bruins should be with one eye on the current regular season path, and another eye toward building something better for next season and getting a head start on more difficult decisions facing this franchise ahead this summer. Perhaps the callup for Lysell was the beginning of the Bruins looking ahead to next year with this season already fumbled through their fingers.