There will be plenty of discussions and analyses about the Boston Bruins and where things went wrong during the Stanley Cup playoffs.
While that somewhat misses the long-term picture, the Bruins weren’t expected by most to be in the playoffs this season, it now becomes a mission to keep building on a retooled roster that performed better than expected this year.
There are some clear pillars that aren’t going anywhere. Jeremy Swayman was Boston’s best performer in the playoffs and during the regular season and ended up as a Vezina Trophy finalist for the first time in his B’s career. David Pastrnak rolled out his fourth straight 100-point season and continues to post big numbers as he turns 30 years old this month and continues a transformation from game-breaking goal scorer to playmaking force that notched a career-high 71 assists this season.
Morgan Geekie set a new career-high with 39 goals scored and continues to be a finisher on a team that could use more of them. Charlie McAvoy, Hampus Lindholm and Nikita Zadorov form the big three on the back end with the Bruins still in search of a fourth top 4 defenseman that can be added to that mix.
Elias Lindholm and Pavel Zacha stand as the top two veteran centers entering next season, with Zacha coming off career highs in goals (30) and points (65) while becoming a trusted pivot in Marco Sturm’s defense-first system.
The B’s bench boss certainly sounded a hopeful tone based on that group leading the Bruins to a 100-point season and a return to the Stanley Cup playoffs.
“It was a long year. It was very intense, especially with being a rookie coach [in the NHL]. My brain was never really off. But that’s the great thing about being a young coach is that you are full of energy, and you are excited to get back into it,” said Sturm. “This team gave me a lot of hope to getting better, and better, and better.
"I can’t give you guarantees about points or wins guarantees for next year because it’s going to be harder. But there is a lot of hope and excitement that I can see moving forward.”
But the bottom line is that the Black and Gold are at one of the first steps while building back up into a Stanley Cup contender. This season was about a return to respectability and ultimately a return to the postseason, but now it’s about adding to the core group while improving things like the defensemen corps, which struggled at times to break the puck out of their zone and keep the puck out of the back of the net.
They absolutely wilted at times under the hard pressure of the Buffalo forecheck, just as they had major issues with a heavy, physical, and fast Florida forecheck in the playoffs as well.
“The heat is always coming [in the playoffs]. That is nothing new,” admitted Sturm. “Maybe we can help our ‘D’ to have a little more time. That’s something I need to dig deeper on.”
One thing Sturm, and even some veteran players in the dressing room, admitted on breakup day was that some of the personnel are likely going to change. It remains to be seen what direction that will take, but it certainly doesn’t bode well for Mason Lohrei that he was a healthy scratch in the last few playoff games. Also, a player like Andrew Peeke approaching unrestricted free agency might price him out of a return to Boston after being pushed into a top 4 role that he clearly isn’t suited for at the NHL level.
Ironically, Peeke led all Bruins defensemen with a plus-2 when it was all said and done at the end of the first-round playoff series against the Sabres.
The Bruins were 12th out of 16 playoff teams in the first round while allowing 3.33 goals per game, and it’s no coincidence that every team that allowed more than three goals per game is now setting up tee times for the rest of the spring. Similarly, the B’s allowed 3.01 goals per game during the regular season, which put them in the middle of the pack, but still not quite good enough for a team that was getting Vezina Trophy-level goaltending from Swayman all season.
Something needs to be improved there, just as the Bruins needed to find ways to generate more scoring once things moved into the playoffs.
“There are areas where we can get better, and have to get better for sure,” said Sturm during his end-of-season press conference when asked about the defensive side of the puck. “Do we have to change the whole system? No. I think the foundation is set now. I like and believe in what we do and what I try to teach here. There are areas where we’ll change some things. Is it personnel? That is part of it.
“There were a few guys that maybe fit our system more than a few others. And more other guys needed more time. So there’s a little bit of a combination [of things that need to help us improve defensively].”
The Bruins famously tried to trade for puck-moving veteran Rasmus Andersson during the season and were going to sign him to a massive contract extension. It all seemed like a clear acknowledgement that they needed help in the puck-moving department, and that is exactly how it played out, as they were repeatedly trapped in their own zone when aggressive, speedy Buffalo players like Josh Doan, Zach Benson, and others went on the attack against them.
“Right now, I have a good idea, but I’ve got to see more [on film]. Some guys need to get better too breaking pucks out under pressure. There are guys that didn’t value [the puck] first how important it is, and that’s why I go back to playing playoff games,” said Sturm when asked about the difficulty breaking the puck out. “Because you can tell how important it is and that we needed first touch [on the puck], and we needed a lot of things to get that puck. And if you don’t then you end up in your own zone and it ends up in the back of the net. So that’s how important it is. Overall, it was an eye-opener for a lot of guys on our team, but it’s my job to get better at it.”
Interestingly enough, vocal leaders like Nikita Zadorov even made references to changes coming to the Bruins' personnel when discussing the issue on breakup day. Zadorov isn’t a sleek greyhound moving the puck by any means, but he was not one of the main culprits when it came to the major difficulties Boston’s back end faced (McAvoy finished a minus-6 and Hampus Lindholm a minus-4) in the first round of the playoffs.
“Marco gave you guys…a lot of our Grade-A chances, a lot of them came off rebounds where they slapped it into the goalie pads in front of the net is not really a dangerous chance. It’s a funny stat to look at. You’ve got to look at the Grade-A chances when you leave the guy open in front of the net, which I think our system has been really good with that,” said Nikita Zadorov. “Our defensemen commitment has been good this year and Marco coming in with a new philosophy and a new system, it takes time to adjust and get full buy in.
“The things we are lacking we are going to work on over the summer and from my understanding management is going to make adjustments to it and bring in the right personnel again to fit the system as well. It’s a step forward for our team. We expected to be in the playoffs. I know you guys didn’t. But we thought we could (make the playoffs) and we could have gone deeper into the postseason, and that’s what we are going to work on moving forward.”
It certainly sounds like it’s going to be an offseason of considerable “adjustments” for a promising, flawed team with $18 plus million in salary cap space, a treasure trove of draft picks and prospects and some very clearly defined needs outside of the goaltending department.
ONE TIMERS
• McAvoy is looking at a lengthy suspension from the NHL for his stick-swinging incident with Benson in the closing minutes of Game 6 at TD Garden. The NHL Player Safety Department announced that McAvoy would have an in-person hearing for the incident, which typically means a suspension of more than five games at the start of next season.
This angle of McAvoy’s slash is nuts pic.twitter.com/3N2eXZSJfw
— Spittin' Chiclets (@spittinchiclets) May 2, 2026
It was a pretty clear slew foot from Benson as the two players went into the corner in the closing minutes of a 4-1 elimination game that started off the brouhaha between the two players, but it was Carolina that wound up with a power play after McAvoy was whistled for a five-minute major for slashing.
McAvoy was not discussing it during breakup day on Sunday at Warrior and had not yet scheduled the in-person hearing in New York with no rush given that the punishment will carry over into next season.
“Just out of respect for the process, I'm probably not gonna comment anything on it until I can have the chance to speak with them,” said McAvoy.
The incident and the subsequent punishment will pose a challenge at the start of Boston’s season next year and serve as a costly reminder that it’s also much better to just start punching the daylights out of an opponent rather than ever opting for swinging a stick like a baseball bat at a player. That being said, a flurry of punches was probably not much of an option either for a player like McAvoy who was skating in the playoffs with a broken right hand.
• Full credit to Bruins defenseman Nikita Zadorov, who was playing through a completely torn MCL in his knee that he suffered in Game 3 of the first-round series against the Buffalo Sabres. One would suspect he wasn’t the only B’s player pushing through something at the end of the season, but he still finished with 21:52 of ice time in the elimination game at Boston and showed good leadership by example for a Bruins team still sorting out their leadership hierarchy for next season and beyond.
“He’s a warrior. Hearing from the medical department, they’d never seen anything like it and that kind of shows it all,” said Sturm. “He wants to play and he did really well. We had a conversation about it and wanted to make sure he was going to help the team. And he looked fine. Good for him playing through an injury like that…and a big man like that. It’s very impressive.
“He’s a big part of our leadership group. You need guys like that. If you look at teams in the past when they don’t have guys like him, it just takes longer. When he says something whether you like it or not, there’s always a point behind it. I think it’s good and it’s important to have a guy like him in the locker room to push [other guys]. He is a little bit old school, and you don’t see that too often anymore.”
There was a pretty extensive injury list for the Bruins on breakup day at Warrior Ice Arena, with Viktor Arvidsson’s broken ribs and punctured lung at the top of the list, a similar injury combo to Patrice Bergeron at the end of the 2013 Stanley Cup Final. Charlie McAvoy fractured his right hand in Game 2 of the first round series and was wearing a soft cast underneath his hockey glove, and is obviously in line to undergo some pretty extensive dental work this summer.
Some other assorted bumps and bruises:
--Pastrnak had a partial tear of his groin in November that he said mentally impacted him and his ability to really open up his stride over the course of the season.
--Lindholm said he had back issues for the second straight season, though it clearly didn’t stop him from playing for Team Sweden at the Winter Olympics.
--Hampus Lindholm had a small fracture in his foot around Christmas that he said bothered him for most of the duration of the season.
--Zacha had a high ankle sprain but indicated that it wasn’t anything that impacted him too negatively during the playof