The common view on the Boston Bruins roster right now, from a fan perspective, is that they are at least one top-6 forward short of a legit NHL roster that could vie for a playoff spot.
Waking up hung in Boston and realizing the Bruins have 2 fourth lines and 1 third line kind of stung Sunday.
— Jordan Schmaltz (@J_Swish24) July 13, 2025
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Geekie-Mittelwrench-Arvidsson
Jeannot-Minten-Poitras
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Beecher
They need 2 more bottom 6 options. They only have 10…
It’s been a similar refrain over the last couple of seasons, and last year in particular it was proven to be largely true when the B’s struggled and finished 27th overall among all teams in the league with a paltry 2.71 goals per game. The sentiment is that there is a top line, but it becomes difficult to differentiate second liners from fourth line grinders once you get past the top few players, and that leads to pessimism about the robustness for the Black and Gold offense.
It's a big part of the push from some for the Bruins to chase after some unsigned restricted free agents still on the market even though the B’s appear fairly locked into the current roster to begin training camp.
One player that’s going to play a major role, for better or worse, amidst the B’s top-6 forward situation is 32-year-old Viktor Arvidsson after arriving in a July 1 trade amongst the free agent frenzy going on around him. He's one of the few guys outside the top line, and probably Zacha, that one could say is definitively top-6 material amongst the current group of NHL roster players.
The cost was minimal at a 2027 fifth-round pick and picking up the entirety of Arvidsson’s $4 million salary cap hit for next season, so it was a smart deal in terms of the B’s bringing in a player that should have a high upside headed into a contract year.
Now the 5-foot-10, 195-pound winger is being relied on to regain his top-6 winger form after managing just 15 goals and 27 points in 67 games for the Oilers last season while struggling to establish himself among a deep Edmonton forward group. That happened a year after back issues limited Arvidsson to just 18 games with the LA Kings where he was admittedly productive (six goals and 15 points) and was coming off two previous seasons where he’d averaged a solid 23 goals and 54 points for the Kings.
“Happy to welcome Viktor and his competitiveness and to help improve our power play,” said Don Sweeney during his July 1 comments following a number of new players being brought into the Bruins fold. “Marco [Sturm] and [Bruins assistant coach] Steve Spott consulted quite a bit when we identified that he obviously was available. Marco had him in LA so it’s a plug-and-play in what we felt he’s capable of doing and bringing to the hockey club.
“It was also an area of goal-scoring [with the Arvidsson trade] that we felt may or not may present in the free agency time frame that we were under.”
In all, Arvidsson has 194 goals and 389 points in 613 NHL games for Nashville, LA and Edmonton, and was a consistent threat as a net-front guy on the power play when spotted there during his career. It’s safe to assume he will resume those net-front duties on Boston’s power play and that he’s going to put up some points if he’s able to remain healthy this coming season. That’s obviously what the Bruins are banking on in slotting him into a second-line winger spot with perhaps Pavel Zacha and Casey Mittelstadt, or a slew of possibilities based on AHL hopefuls like 25-year-old Matej Blumel or hungry, young B’s players like Georgii Merkulov, Matt Poitras and Fabian Lysell among others.
Arvidsson played for Sturm when he was an assistant coach for Los Angeles and they worked together on the man advantage back then, so there isn’t a lot of mystery or intrigue about where the fit is going to be for the Black and Gold.
“I’m gonna come there, I’m gonna play a responsible game, and I think Marco (Sturm) knows exactly what he’s getting from me,” said Arvidsson. “I’m gonna help offensively and bring scoring. I know I can do that. I know I had a little bit of a tough time last year with that and the opportunity [in Edmonton]. I’m gonna bring that, I know that. I’m really confident that I’m gonna make the team better."
It feels like the B’s top line is going to be set for the start of the season after Morgan Geekie, Elias Lindholm and David Pastrnak finished last season so strongly, but that will largely be reliant on Geekie being able to match a career season with Lindholm also playing like he did in last season’s final couple of months. The only locked guarantee among those three players will be that Pastrnak is the game-breaking superstar capable of carrying a team offensively for periods of time, but it will be up to others to support him and make sure the offensive burden is not too great.
Arvidsson will be the most accomplished offense producer below that top line, so there will be expectations for him to be better than he’s been the last couple of seasons at an age where most NHL players are starting to slow down. The Bruins are looking at it as a collective improvement across the board offensively with some major improvement from a power play that struggled last season as well, rather than expecting players like Geekie and Arvidsson to generate production at the highest levels of their career.
But it also feels like they are banking on these players to be on the higher end of their production history in order for the offense to flow. If not then either the Bruins won’t be in the playoff hunt at all for a second straight season, or they will be searching for goal-scoring help at the trade deadline to augment this current group.
“The group itself, if the power play comes back online and [the power play performers] are feeling better about themselves, I think there will be enough [offense] around,” said Sweeney. “But that’s the area where if you look at the group we’ve got to tease it out of them. And we have to. And you have to be healthy as well.
“But if you look at LA and Minnesota, they didn’t lead the league in scoring. They still generated enough and found a way to score enough, and they were in the playoffs. So at the end of the day, we need to be a more competitive team and offensively we need to find a way. Steve Spott will be a big part of that with the power play. If we have to find a little bit more [scoring punch] during the course of the season, we have space to do that and we have the draft capital to do that. If we’re in position, I think you guys know that I’ve had a pretty aggressive mindset and we’ll try to complement [the group].”
If Arvidsson enjoys a comeback season, then some of that may not even be necessary, but it underscores how much his performance is going to dictate a return to effective and functional offense for the Black and Gold this season.