The opening night lineup for the Boston Bruins this coming season, with the first game now officially taking place at home on Tuesday, Sept. 29 against the New York Rangers, is going to be a bit muddled no matter what. Charlie McAvoy will be serving a six-game suspension for chopping Zach Benson with his stick at the end of last spring’s first-round playoff series against the Sabres, and there are still some very real questions as to which defensemen are still even going to be with the team at the end of training camp.
But there is more than enough to start piecing things together as NHL.com did this past week in spitting out a projected lineup for the Black and Gold once everybody is healthy and cleared to play in games.
What you could see in Boston come the fall... 👀
— NHL Media (@NHLMedia) July 9, 2026
Thoughts on this projected lineup for the @NHLBruins? 💭
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It’s an interesting first stab at putting together lines and pairings, and it’s very notable that it doesn’t include Henri Jokiharju or Mason Lohrei as part of Boston’s projected back once the full group is together. There are most definitely moves to be made on the blue line with a group of 10 players with a legit claim to NHL playing time for just six spots, and one of them being a 22-year-old Frederic Brunet that the Bruins are actively looking to get into the lineup for Boston this upcoming season after a strong year in Providence.
“D zone exits are going to be an area that we have to be better at. Part of that, I should say, starts up the ice, and Marco's [Sturm] pointed out that we'll probably have to forecheck a little differently, and create anxiety up the ice. [That creates chances for] some of our D having the opportunity to surf the neutral zone as opposed to maybe back up and retrieve,” said Don Sweeney. “So we have to continue to evolve…everybody does. There's only one [Stanley Cup] winner, and nobody's really copying that exact form, but there are bits and pieces that I think have to be malleable as a group.
“That's where our group is hopefully getting to. [Frederic] Brunet is a good example, with the mobility and puck skill that he’s applied in Providence, and how is that [skill set] going to translate to the National Hockey League this year? There's a good chance we're going to find out.”
The real burning question on the back end is whether 27-year-old Jonathan Aspirot is going to be able to continue handling top-pair minutes after a strong rookie season where he finished with a plus-30 in 61 games along with three goals and 13 points. Aspirot was a solid, no-nonsense stay-at-home defender who allowed McAvoy the freedom to roam a little bit more as an offense creator and impact defender, but the pairing ran into problems late season and during the playoffs with some pretty costly breakdowns.
Outside of that, it’s a no-brainer that McAvoy, Hampus Lindholm and Will Borgen will be the top 4 defenders to start with Nikita Zadorov and Connor Clifton looking like rough-and-tumble bottom-pair guys to start things off. Borgen should be an all-around upgrade over Andrew Peeke, who struggled when given a top 4 workload in Boston last season before signing a one-year, $1 million contract with the Utah Mammoth.
How Lohrei fits into all this after finishing with the second-most points (26) among Bruins defensemen last season remains a question mark, and one of the big unknowns in the middle of the summer.
Up front, there will undoubtedly be a bevy of different combos that Marco Sturm and the coaching staff will be looking at, but one would suspect that JJ Peterka and David Pastrnak will get first looks together based on their elite offensive skill sets. A playmaking Pastrnak could really open up scoring chances for Peterka, and in turn the German winger’s presence could allow No. 88 to score a little more than he did with just 29 goals last season.
The question is whether a veteran center like Pavel Zacha or Elias Lindholm should be the guy in the middle between those two wingers, or whether 22-year-old two-way center Fraser Minten gets the call after an impressive 200-foot rookie season in Boston.
Also, the B’s second line will be remade this year with the feisty Viktor Arvidsson departing for Detroit in free agency after he teamed with Zacha and Casey Mittelstadt for a very effective trio this past season. The 19-year-old wunderkind James Hagens will likely land there eventually as an offensive threat, very likely to start on the wing, but one could see the gifted younger player opening the year in a third-line situation, perhaps with Minten, as the Bruins see what those two dynamic young players could do together.
Sturm seemed to like Elias Lindholm and Morgan Geekie together as a pair last season, and adding a dynamic, speedy line partner like Marat Khusnutdinov to that trio makes a ton of sense for upping the pace. The real competition will be on the fourth line, where there is a wealth of candidates, with Tanner Jeannot, Mark Kastelic, Sean Kuraly, Mikey Eyssimont, and Matt Poitras among others in the running for spots.
This is a big part of the reason there have been summer whispers that forwards like Kuraly or Eyssimont could be moved during training camp, or during the early part of the season. The sentiment is that the 22-year-old Poitras has earned the chance to win his spot back with the Bruins after spending the last two seasons honing his all-around game in Providence.
It would be difficult to deal a veteran leader like Kuraly away after he put together a solid season, but Eyssimont just hasn’t really found a role on the Bruins to this point after being brought in to be a hard-to-play-against bottom-6 type. It also wouldn’t surprise this humble hockey writer in the least if Elias Lindholm gets bumped down into a bottom-6 center role this season if he can’t be a little more consistently productive amidst the back problems he’s developed over the last two seasons.
“I have some work to do, to continue to add to our club, and a little bit of that is based on what's the internal growth [of our players], you know? I’ve pointed out a few of those players that are going to be part of that,” said Sweeney. “I think we're back to being a competitive team with a little more balance to hopefully continue to attack [the puck] the way I described earlier and be a threat. I think we stood here a year ago and wondered whether or not we were going to score enough goals, and to the players' credit and the coach's credit, they found ways.
“Our power-play improved. We have a different look now, with a left one timer in the elbow. I hope it all comes together. I hope we're right back at the upper echelon. The challenge is we are a 100-point team. I don't know whether or not any of us thought we were a bona fide 100-point team [a year ago], but we went out and did it. The players get all the credit, and I'm trying to make sure I supply [them] all the assets as players that we continue to improve [the roster].”
Here’s our first crack at a projected Bruins roster for next season:
Peterka-Zacha-Pastrnak
Khusnutdinov-Lindholm-Geekie
Hagens-Minten-Mittelstadt
Jeannot-Poitras/Kuraly-Kastelic
Aspirot-McAvoy
Lindholm-Borgen
Zadorov-Clifton
Swayman
DiPietro