As they already realized for most of last season, life without stalwart D-man Hampus Lindholm can be pretty rocky for the Boston Bruins.
With Lindholm out of the lineup and dealing with an undisclosed injury that will cause him to miss an extended period of time, the Boston Bruins sprung leaks defensively against the Seattle Kraken and came up short in a 7-4 game at Climate Pledge Arena.
That’s the same Seattle team that’s hovering near the bottom of the NHL in offense while averaging 2.78 goals per game, even as they’ve climbed into playoff position in the Pacific Division. But a second-period breakdown in the final minutes before the intermission ultimately doomed the Black and Gold just as they were locked in a fairly even 2-2 game while looking to conclude their five-game road trip on a positive note.
“The details matter and it cost us,” said Marco Sturm as the Bruins finished 2-2-1 on the final road swing through the West Coast this season. “It’s a bitter taste today because that’s something that we have to learn as a group.
“Very immature. 60 minutes today [and we win]. Those are the games we have to learn [from]. But looking back, I would take the five [points] on the road trip. Any time…any time. But we have a long way to go.”
It was Mason Lohrei who was the chief culprit behind the second-period breakdown, as he lost a series of puck battles behind the Boston net and then failed to rim the puck up the boards once he had brief control before again losing possession to fourth liner Tye Kartye.
BENNY BOY! 🚨
— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) January 7, 2026
A great shift for the fourth line ends with Tye Kartye setting up Ben Meyers.
3-2 #SeaKraken pic.twitter.com/vk7F1ui2ja
Seconds later, the puck ended up in the back of Boston’s net, and a little over 90 seconds later, the Kraken got a last-second PP goal that served as the backbreaker.
The Bruins got close enough in the third period to futilely pull the goalie at the end of the game, but the issue ostensibly was players like Lohrei being elevated into a top-4 role with Lindholm’s workhorse presence missing from the B’s back end.
Lohrei was third in ice time for B’s defensemen behind Charlie McAvoy (23:51) and Nikita Zadorov (23:14), and both he and Jonathan Aspirot had critical errors in the second period that really cost the Black and Gold. It was Henri Jokiharju’s turn in the third period as he couldn’t keep the puck in the offensive zone on an ill-fated pinch that turned into a transition goal for the Kraken at the other end of the ice.
McAvoy correctly assessed the loss afterward and lamented that they wasted away two possible points with self-inflicted mistakes that were team-wide, of course, but also most glaring for a suddenly undermanned B’s back end that’s trying to figure it out again without Lindholm.
“Just mental mistakes. We put ourselves behind the 8-ball,” said McAvoy. “We absolutely did this to ourselves tonight. We should have been more prepared and we should have had better legs. Mentally we gave them everything they had tonight.
“Compete…compete…Wherewithal mentally. You can’t sleep. We talked about them going into the slot. The second goal we do it to ourselves on a turnover and it comes back down the other way. The third one, it’s just ‘win a battle.’ It’s not just about being in the right spot, but it’s about doing your job when you are there. We have guys in good spots, but they’re just not ready for [the Kraken] in the slot. That’s just completely on us. It’s just frustrating…it really is.”
Not to disagree with McAvoy’s assessment, but there were also some physical mistakes as well, compounded by the mental breakdowns, a disappointing bit of execution against a Kraken team that was on the second night of back-to-back games.
It’s pretty clear in looking at the ice time breakdowns that the Bruins worked McAvoy and Zadorov hard, and then tried to spread the ice evenly between the other four D-men while keeping all of their individual workloads under 20 minutes. That isn’t going to be sustainable in the short term or the long term for Boston’s back end while Lindholm is out, and underscores a growing need for the Bruins to explore bringing in another frontline D-man ahead of the NHL trade deadline.
The good news is that there are names like Justin Faulk, Brandon Carlo, Rasmus Andersson and Connor Murphy expected to be available on the right side, and even the possibility that the Leafs move Morgan Rielly on the left side. None of them will solve Boston’s problems fully and it’s very doubtful at this point that Carlo would ever theoretically be coming back, but they all represent upgrades over the current group behind McAvoy and Zadorov.
As for now, it’s just clear frustration across the board that the Bruins can’t fully pull themselves out of the back-and-forth rut that they are in right now. And it’s difficult to get a read on the timing for Lindholm’s return based on Sturm’s comments and the need to undergo testing when he returns to Boston.
“He’s been hurt. It’s not gonna be a day-to-day thing,” said Sturm of Lindholm, who had played well while taking a slew of penalties at times that have him on pace for a career-high in PIMs this season. “Hopefully not out for too long. But he’s definitely going to be out for a little bit. We have to do more testing when we’re back in Boston so we can go from there. We’re going to wait until we get back because there’s nothing we can do right now and let our doctors decide what the next steps [are going to be].”
Sturm clarified on Wednesday that he's somewhere between week-to-week and day-to-day, but he's on injured reserve and will be out at least through this weekend.
The timing is interesting in that everything with Lindholm happened early this week after it was learned that he didn’t make the cut for Sweden’s Olympic team, and that there is just a month until the weeks-long Olympic break gets going for players like Lindholm. Could he be shut down and allowed to basically rest for close to two months and return for the final regular season spring and playoff push after getting ample time to heal?
Is it possible that the Bruins could do that and still sustain any kind of a playoff push as they currently sit just three points outside a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference?
Nobody knows the answer to any of these questions, but there’s a lot of concern about how exactly the Bruins are going to thrive, or even survive, with Lindholm on the shelf again with an injury.