If there is one young Bruins player that hasn’t generated a lot of conversation about where he fits into the NHL puzzle this upcoming season, it has to be former first-round pick Fabian Lysell at a crossroads in his B’s career.
The Black and Gold world should be ablaze right now with the prospects that the 22-year-old holds as hockey promise after scoring his first NHL goal last season, and a roster that is fairly wide open if somebody can provide some offensive fireworks.
Instead, it feels like Lysell is a bit of a forgotten man for the Bruins, coming off a lackluster AHL season and a stint in Boston where he managed just three points in 15 games before underachieving again in the Calder Cup playoffs for the Providence Bruins. It got to a point where Lysell was healthy scratched during the playoffs and finished with just two assists in seven AHL playoff games during two rounds of American League playoffs.
Perhaps because of how the season ended for him, the Bruins dipped into free agency with players who are around the same age as Lysell while vastly outperforming him in the AHL over the last couple of seasons. One of those players is 25-year-old Matej Blumel, who scored 39 goals and 72 points in 67 games for the AHL Texas Stars last season, as he was signed to a one-year, one-way contract for $875,000 that will give him an inside track on an NHL roster spot based on the contract itself.
Too bad the Bruins bottom six is way too crowded because Matej Blumel could’ve been a fun player to compete for a job pic.twitter.com/gKvfFWQHYV
— Robert Chalmers (@IvanIvanlvan) July 3, 2025
Essentially, Blumel is the explosive offensive player that the Bruins thought they were getting when they selected the speedy, skilled Lysell with the 21st overall pick in the 2021 NHL Draft, but Lysell has topped out at 15 goals and 50 points for the P-Bruins during his AHL career. Beyond Blumel, the Bruins also signed 25-year-old center Alex Steeves after 36 goals and 62 points in 59 games for the Toronto Marlies last season.
“[Blumel] and Alex both…they’ve done what they needed to do with scoring at the American Hockey League at a high, high level and they’ve done it with consistency,” said Don Sweeney. “There are a number of players around the league that have been in this situation, and when they’ve gotten the [NHL] opportunity they have taken advantage of it. The conversations we had with both [players] is that if you’re going to score at the National Hockey League level then we want you do it here, and not anywhere else. They’re excited about it. And if they take the NHL job of somebody that believes they are an incumbent, that is what happens at the National Hockey League level when somebody gets passed. The internal competition is something that we needed to get back to and we’re hoping that they take advantage of their opportunities.”
It speaks in some ways to what the Bruins haven’t received from Lysell or 24-year-old Georgii Merkulov in their NHL stints over the last couple of seasons, but it also speaks to some wide-open top-9 forward spots to be won during Bruins training camp. As always, Don Sweeney indicated there will be NHL spots available to be seized by a young player if he can outperform the NHL veteran guys being eyed for roster spots.
“We are going to put together a competitive team to bring some juice back in here,” said Sweeney back on July 1 after the Bruins made a number of roster additions including Viktor Arvidsson, Mikey Eyssimont, Sean Kuraly and Tanner Jeannot, along with a number of re-signed incumbent players. “That applies to elevating our current guys and them feeling reinvigorated coming off some injuries in a very down year.
“Just the responses from some of those guys and [the new guys] that are really excited to get here…and maybe it is from the bottom [on] up. But the juice is coming and we expect to be a much more competitive team, and the improvements come from within. But make no mistake, if a younger player has the opportunity to make our team, then he is making our team. I think we did that two years and Matt Poitras is a good example of [the NHL club] making room [for a young player]. There is room and the competition is there, and that’s what we want.”
But the aforementioned Lysell doesn’t feel like a guy who's at the forefront of any conversations about vacant NHL roster spots a month ahead of training camp. And now there are whispers that the Bruins have discussed trade options with Lysell while perhaps swapping him for a similarly underperforming prospect from another organization.
The one most specifically discussed was trade scenarios involving Lysell with the Edmonton Oilers that make a lot of sense from a Bruins perspective, but perhaps not as much from the Oil’s point of view unless there’s a big Lysell fan in Edmonton’s front office. Perhaps it’s a situation similar to Merkulov, who reportedly approached the Bruins about a trade last season while clearly not happy with the way things have played out with his opportunities to win an NHL roster spot in Boston over the last few years.
The other interesting aspect to all of this is whether the Bruins have an interest in trying to get Lysell to transform his game a little bit and utilize the speed and skating ability in a different way as players like PJ Axelsson and Sami Pahlsson did in generations past as premier NHL checking forwards. It’s dubious at best that Lysell could play that kind of gritty, team-oriented game after building his hockey career as an explosive, creative offensive force, and that may be behind a fresh start elsewhere if the former first-round pick does get moved to a different NHL organization.
The bottom line in all of this is that it felt like a change of scenery might be needed for Lysell and the Bruins after the way last season ended in Providence, and perhaps it will play out that way over the next few months after the top prospect hasn’t really lived up to advanced billing over the last few years.