One of the biggest questions entering next season for the Boston Bruins: Who is going to take up the leadership mantle vacated by Brad Marchand’s trade to the Florida Panthers?
The Black and Gold are obviously operating in a bit of a vacuum right now with nobody wearing the “C” after the franchise-shaking Marchand deal with the Panthers, but they do have Charlie McAvoy and David Pastrnak still operating as the alternate captains.
In fact, it was somewhat interesting that an injured McAvoy, nowhere close to a game return, was brought onto the long West Coast road trip after the Nikita Zadorov/Jeremy Swayman situation cropped up.
“Did you guys appreciate that Jeremy stuck up for Khusnutdinov?”
— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) March 24, 2025
“Is that what it is?” No comment.”
Nikita Zadorov got asked about Swayman’s near-fight. pic.twitter.com/xqjeWZZf60
He is currently skating with the team, but there has been no timetable for a return to game action after his shoulder injury, so there wasn’t a ton of urgency to get him on the ice for hockey reasons.
It instead felt like perhaps the greater urgency was McAvoy’s leadership to help stabilize a team embroiled in a 10-game losing streak that will go down as one of the low points in recent franchise memory. The good news is that McAvoy’s presence coupled with Pastrnak’s leadership helped the Bruins finally snap the losing kid and bring everybody back on the same page to finish out the season with solid, prideful professional efforts against teams with deeper, greater talent wells.
That brings us to Pastrnak, who collected three assists in Sunday night’s 6-3 loss to the Buffalo Sabres at KeyBank Center, and now has 40 goals and is closing on 100 points for the season. Pastrnak exploded for his 19th career hat trick in Saturday’s home win over the Hurricanes and has factored into each of Boston’s last 11 goals scored while literally becoming the focal point of the Black and Gold offense.
In truth, he has been electric since Jan. 1 for the Bruins with 27 goals and 60 points in 39 games over the last four months.
Pastrnak won’t win the Hart Trophy given the way the Bruins have collapsed in the second half of the season, but there’s a clear argument to be made that he is the league’s most valuable player based on the way he carried this sputtering B’s group. In a lot of ways, that is exactly the kind of on-ice performance that makes a player worthy of being the next captain of an Original Six NHL franchise.
“I’ve seen him since Day One and he’s had some incredible seasons, but to still be able to produce this year at the rate he has with everything that has gone on…it says a lot about him as a player and as a person too. He’s just one of those guys. The great players just want to keep on going, and going, and that’s what he’s been able to do,” said Joe Sacco. “It’s just the way he is. He sees himself as a guy that just wants to drive offense and keep pushing.”
Working against Pastrnak’s potential captaincy is that he is perhaps not in the same serious-minded mold of traditional two-way players like Zdeno Chara and Patrice Bergeron that have been longtime captains of the Bruins franchise. The right winger is a little more carefree than Chara and Bergeron, and certainly he’s more prone to turnovers, ill-timed penalties and defensive miscues than those other two all-time Bruins.
But Pastrnak is also a guy who learned from both of those legendary leaders and understands the pride and privilege that goes along with wearing the Spoked-B. And he’s also the single most important factor in the Bruins turning things around next season and beyond.
“I will never take a day for granted here. I’m super honored to wear this jersey and play for this organization,” said Pastrnak, after Saturday’s win over Carolina. “This city is amazing. To see the Garden happy, loud and enjoying themselves is fun, and it’s motivational for the players too. I take a lot of pride in being a Bruin.”
It remains to be seen how this offseason is going to play out. Bruins management will obviously not leave much off the table for options as they go about retooling the NHL club, so there could be a lot of different ways things could go over the next few months.
But it seems very likely that either McAvoy or Pastrnak is going to be named the 28th captain of the Boston Bruins, and No. 88 has shown his candidacy with his consistent effort and example down the stretch as one of the few positives for a collapsing hockey team.
ONE TIMERS
*Fraser Minten has played a couple of games for the Bruins since being called up from Providence, so it’s a small sample size thus far for the 20-year-old forward. He looks like he’s got the potential to be a pretty good faceoff guy once he gets his NHL bearings, and he definitely wins his share of battles as a 6-foot-2 two-way forward who isn’t afraid to get his nose in there. But he also hasn’t registered a shot on net in each of the first two games that he’s played and is still feeling his way through a new team after arriving in Boston as a valued prospect in the deal that sent Brandon Carlo to Toronto.
“The reports that we got from Providence were that he’s been a very reliable player, smart, heady player, probably in more of a penalty-kill role,” Sacco said of the expectations on Minten. “We’re going to throw him in the penalty kill here tonight, see where that goes. … I think we’re just looking to see him play a game that he’s been playing in Providence.
“He’s been playing well down there, and it’s an opportunity for the organization to get a look at him.”
*One player who’s acquitted himself fairly well down the stretch while playing like he wants to stay in the NHL is Cole Koepke. The numbers have been decent (nine goals and 16 points in 69 games) for a guy who’s played mostly fourth line this season, and once upon a time, it looked like Koepke, Mark Kastelic and Johnny Beecher were going to be a really good fourth line for the Black and Gold.
Koepke is playing with speed and physicality, blocking shots and even dropped the gloves for the first time in his NHL career last week while trying to do what he could to bring a spark to a sputtering B’s crew.
Solid fight between Cole Koepke and Guhle#gohabsgo#NHLBruins
— RGF (@rgfray1) April 4, 2025
pic.twitter.com/EmHbQ2wtT9
“I thought it was a big hit on Lysell, and they were taking it to us in the second period,” said Koepke of challenging Kaiden Guhle after he threw a big neutral zone hit on Fabian Lysell in Montreal. “I wanted to stand in for him, and then also, I thought it was a good time to try and get some energy for the team and kind of try and flip the script and get the game back even and get some pressure on them.”
The 26-year-old winger is approaching unrestricted free agency this offseason and the Bruins have been fairly candid that they probably aren’t going to bring their UFAs back following this season. But perhaps it might be worth it with Koepke, who could be a pretty affordable bottom-6 piece that should be given some credit for playing hard, committed hockey all the way down to the bitter end this season.