In a season where so many things went wrong for the Boston Bruins, Morgan Geekie stands as probably the best feel-good story of a year that’s mercifully over.
The 26-year-old forward shattered career-highs as he finished off his regular season with his 33rd goal of the year in Tuesday night’s 5-4 overtime loss to the New Jersey Devils and finished with 57 points in 77 games as Boston officially closed out their season.
Make it 33 goals on the season for Morgan Geekie.
— Conor Ryan (@ConorRyan_93) April 15, 2025
1-1 game. pic.twitter.com/Vj6mkHMz9d
Geekie even finished the year scoring goals in six consecutive games and scored the most goals by anybody in a Bruins uniform in the last 15 years not named Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand or David Pastrnak.
You have to go all the way back to Phil Kessel’s 36 goals scored in the 2008-09 season before he shot his way out of Boston and got himself traded to Toronto.
Geekie capped all of that off with the NESN 7th Player Award presented to him prior to Tuesday night’s game, a fitting accolade for a player who really stepped up and into a vital top-6 role that the Bruins envisioned for him prior to the season. It wasn’t all smiles and backslaps, of course, as Geekie struggled mightily at the start of the year and was scratched five times in the first 20 games of the season by Jim Montgomery.
It got to the point where Geekie even good-naturedly responded to a fan using both barrels to call him out on social media.
Damn bro tell me how you really feel
— Morgan Geekie (@gmoneyslic) December 3, 2024
“I still use it as motivation. I still do read most things and people that said those things at the beginning of the year have maybe changed the narrative a little bit,” admitted Geekie. “I don’t really forget what they said at the start of the year because it’s really easy to jump on the bandwagon when somebody is doing well.
“It’s something that can be an asset if you use it correctly and it can definitely also tear you down. So there’s a nice balance to it. I know there’s a lot of people close to me that have stuck beside me too. It’s nice to have people in your corner and people that you can rely on.
Geekie isn’t forgetting any of the jibes and the cheap shots thrown his way early in the season, but he definitely used it in the right way adding fuel to his fire production-wise.
Since that Dec. 3 nadir to his 2024-25 season, Geekie collected a two-goal game against Chicago the very next day and was an unstoppable force playing his “off” left wing and forging chemistry with Pastrnak whether it was Pavel Zacha or Elias Lindholm centering the two of them. Geekie scored 31 goals and 51 points in the final 55 games of the season and became the kind of shoot-first player that is desperately needed with a playmaking force like Pastrnak at his opposite wing.
“Obviously I’m proud of the way I finished the year out, but having the season be over now is tough to process,” said Geekie, who hoisted a career-high 150 shots on net this season. “It was just not being afraid to shoot. I’ve always had a good shot. You can get into spots where you defer especially if you’re playing with guys that can produce. You get into spots where you don’t expect to score, but I think it’s just about having a shoot-first mentality.
“Chemistry is a big one too. A lot of stability this year playing with the same two or three guys this year, and that’s important when it comes to playing off each other and getting to the right spots.”
Many lumped Geekie into a number of other players likely to be traded at the NHL trade deadline, but it really never made much sense as he was a restricted free agent still under Bruins control. He’s also a 6-foot-3, 210-pound forward who consistently exhibits second and third effort on pucks, shoots rockets off his stick that can handcuff opposing goaltenders and plays with a level of heaviness that will be effective in the postseason.
So now it becomes a waiting game this season with Geekie as a restricted free agent with arbitration rights that’s earned a big payday. Geekie’s next contract was the talk of the TNT studio last weekend during the Bruins/Penguins game and analyst Brian Boucher theorized that the young forward was very likely looking at a pay raise to the tune of five-year, $5 million per season contract.
The @NHL_On_TNT crew talking about contract for RFA Morgan Geekie at intermission and @BrianBoucher33 mentions 5X5 or 5X6 as a reasonable landing spot. Been saying for a while he's probably looking at a raise to the $5-6M AAV range, so that tracks for sure
— Joe Haggerty (@HackswithHaggs) April 13, 2025
That seems like pretty reasonable raise from his current $2 million number as goal-scorers get paid in the NHL and players are viewed very differently once they have proven they can cross the 30-goal threshold. A couple of sources indicated to Boston Sports Journal that Geekie spurned a Bruins contract offer at the beginning of the season that was perhaps more team-friendly, so one would expect this is going to be a negotiation where the B’s are going to need to pay market value.
Either way, Geekie was not stressed about it following Tuesday night’s finale loss to the Devils. And why should he be as he knows he’s staring at a good a contract following his best NHL season in the prime of his career.
"I'm going to leave that up to my agent and I'm not going to give it much thought,” said Geekie. “You just cherish these last few moments we have as a group together. Everybody knows in this business we're not going to be together again, this same group. There will be changes. It's just the nature of the beast. I'm not worried about it. It'll happen when it happens."
Given the recent nature of contract negotiations with the Bruins, all of this will bear watching in the summertime with a player in Geekie that’s consistently said he’d like to remain in Boston for the rest of his career. Certainly, GM Don Sweeney has shouldered his share of blame for contracts handed out that haven’t lived up to advanced billing, but Geekie clearly isn’t one of those after coming to Boston on a two-year, $4 million deal a couple of years ago.
Instead now it’s about Geekie maintaining the high level that he’s achieved this season and elevating the play of those around him with consistency that wasn’t there for him at the beginning of the year.
“It’s tough to comprehend scoring 30 goals. It’s the best league in the world and I’m proud of myself with the way the year went and where I’m at now,” said Geekie. “But you always strive to get better. And then the year we had as a team, it’s like ‘Where did it go wrong?’ I know I scored 30 goals, but how do we get someone else 25?
“It’s nice to see a little bit of a reward for all the hard work, but I think I can still grow as a player, get better defensively and bring even more to the team.”
On the other side of things, Geekie did score on a whopping 22 percent of the shots that he took this season and could be in line for a little bit of regression next season and beyond after getting some fortunate bounces this year. But in a season where so many things went south for the Black and Gold, it’s noteworthy to acknowledge how much things have been right for Geekie since he arrived in Boston a couple of years ago.