2026-2027 NHL team preview: Boston Bruins

LAST SEASON

The Boston Bruins achieved everything they set out to in former player Marco Sturm’s first year behind the bench. They got younger. Fraser Minten and Marat Khusnutdinov brought dogged energy up and down the lineup, and prized prospect James Hagens debuted in the spring. They got tougher. Mark Kastelic and Tanner Jeannot took on all comers in key checking-line roles, and Jonathan Aspirot joined Nikita Zadorov and Charlie McAvoy as one of the league’s preeminent blue-line thumpers. Crucially, they got better, rinsing off their first playoff miss in nearly a decade with a 45-win, 100-point campaign.

For a while there, it even seemed like they’d succeeded in throwing a talented young Buffalo Sabres team off their game before succumbing in a six-game first-round defeat. So, why isn’t anyone excited about this team’s chances in 2026-27? If it were 20 years ago, we’d accept at face value that the B’s are back in all their rough-and-tumble glory. Now, though, we know so much more about the sport than what shows in the standings. Games aren’t played on a spreadsheet, it’s true, but the statistical evidence overwhelmingly suggests the Bruins of 2025-26 were a poor team propped up by a few elite operators.

They don’t come more elite than David Pastrnak, the Czech dynamo who has evolved from one of the game’s most feared snipers into a preternaturally gifted playmaker. Pastrnak’s 100 points were 32 more than the next Bruin. He contributed to more than 37 percent of the team’s 268 goals (10th). Despite Pastrnak’s brilliance, goaltender Jeremy Swayman was the team’s MVP by acclaim. Swayman took nearly 29 expected goals off the board, per MoneyPuck, while logging quality starts in more than 70 percent of his appearances. That was no mean feat; Boston gave up the third-most high-danger chances and expected goals against of any team in the NHL. 

Minten was an excellent play driver down the middle, and McAvoy provided peerless leadership while battling through a stomach-turning series of facial injuries, but take away Pastrnak and Swayman, and Boston picks in the top six for the second time in two seasons. No team would thrive without its two best players, of course, but the Bruins needed herculean efforts from both of theirs to escape the Atlantic Division’s basement last season. Repeating the feat after an uneven offseason of roster tinkering by longtime GM Don Sweeney would border on miraculous.

KEY ADDITIONS & DEPARTURES

Additions

JJ Peterka, LW
Will Borgen, D
Connor Clifton, D
Ivan Ivan, C

Departures

Viktor Arvidsson, RW (Det)
Joonas Korpisalo, G (NYR)
Fabian Lysell, LW (Col)
Riley Tufte, LW (NJ)
Matej Blumel, RW (Cze)
Andrew Peeke, D (Uta)

OFFENSE

The Bruins have lost so many of Pastrnak’s preferred linemates via trade or retirement in recent years that the opposition’s defensive gameplans have become as simple as “stop No. 88 in black.” Though swarming defenses have led to steady year-over-year decreases in his shot volume and goals, slowing ‘Pasta’ down is easier said than done; he continues to churn out 100-point seasons by using all the attention he draws to find open teammates. Pastrnak’s career-high 71 assists ranked sixth last season, and the list of NHLers with more helpers since 2023 goes: Nikita Kucherov, Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, and Quinn Hughes. Rare air, indeed.

A great many of those assists have gone to Morgan Geekie, the late-blooming winger with one of the most devastating shots in hockey; Geekie fired off more 90-mph blasts last season than any forward except Tage Thompson and Alex Ovechkin. So terrifying is Geekie’s howitzer that he probably doesn’t get enough credit for his silky hands around the net. With returns of 33 and 39 goals over the past two seasons and a conversion rate north of 20 percent in both, Geekie has emerged from early-career obscurity to become an elite finisher. 

It’s easy to wonder, when scanning the Bruins’ lineup, where else the goals will come from. Yes, versatile center Pavel Zacha scored a whopping 30 goals in 2025-26 and veteran pivot Elias Lindholm, who centered Geekie and Pastrnak for much of the season, labored through back pain to notch 17. Yes, they were just two of five Bruins not named Pastrnak or Geekie to reach 15 tallies. Still, even if a healthy Lindholm climbs above the 20-goal plateau, do you trust Zacha’s white-hot finishing to hold? Last year’s 22.9 SH% (third in NHL) was 10 points higher than his previous career average. What about 19 percent marks from grinder Khusnutdinov or gun-shy playmaker Casey Mittelstadt?

Sweeney tried to get out ahead of any potential regression with his biggest swing of the offseason, a trade for talented but mercurial winger JJ Peterka. Whether Peterka brings his rush offense to Pastrnak’s unit or replaces Viktor Arvidsson as the offensive engine of Boston’s second line, it will be one of Sturm’s top priorities to get his countryman firing more consistently than he did during 2024-25. Though Peterka managed 25 goals and 47 points for the Utah Mammoth, his defensive struggles and tendency to ghost out of games led the team to call time on their relationship with the young forward after only a season.

McAvoy will continue to provide most of the blueline offense after notching a career-high 61 points in only 69 games. Boston isn’t exactly rife with alternative options to score from the point, so making due whilst McAvoy serves a six-game suspension for his moment of madness in the playoffs will provide an early challenge for the ninth-ranked power play (23.4 percent) he quarterbacked last season.

DEFENSE

The Bruins had at least nine defensemen who wouldn’t be safe bets to clear waivers under contract at the time of this writing. It’s the quality, not the quantity, that was the issue last season, though. Olympic gold medallist McAvoy, at least, is a genuine No. 1 option. He and Aspirot, a 26-year-old rookie who finished with an incredible +30 rating, certainly looked the part of old-school defensive stoppers as Sturm’s preferred top unit down the stretch. Their break-even puck possession numbers (well, almost) were as good as it got for Boston’s regular units.

Hampus Lindholm was once one of the most reliable shutdown options in the NHL, but an injury history that includes a nasty fractured kneecap in 2024 has slowed him down. Sweeney is hoping Lindholm and incoming hardscrabble righty Will Borgen can recreate the twin towers dynamic the former had with Brandon Carlo in his prime. Lindholm and the last Carlo stand-in, Andrew Peeke, were crushed by a 21-8 score as a unit last season, so the Boston brass is betting the former New York Ranger Borgen is a significant upgrade on Peeke. Aside from his superior mobility (Borgen ranked in the 75th percentile or better in top speed and 20+ mph bursts, per NHL EDGE), the numbers don’t really bear that out. The new-look second unit should get tons of runway to develop chemistry in McAvoy’s absence, but it’s up to them to decide if that’s a good thing.

It might not be fair to term penalty-prone behemoth Nikita Zadorov a third-pair defender after his second consecutive season of managing fairly well with 20+ minutes of ATOI. He is nonetheless likely to start the season with Connor Clifton on what is nominally the Bruins’ bottom unit. Zadorov and the returning ‘Cliffy’ can really lay the lumber, but combining them is almost as scary for Boston as it is for the bad guys; Zadorov (league-leading 152 PIM) left the Bruins’ bottom-10 PK (76.9 percent) overexposed enough (65 PPG against, T-most) last season, as is. Both Zadorov and Clifton have a bad habit of pulling themselves out of position to blow a guy up.

The Boston blueline looks as weak as it has on paper in years, and, for once, there is no Patrice Bergeron, Steve Kasper, or Don Marcotte to pick up the slack further up the ice. Could Minten become the Bruins’ next shutdown center? Matchup duties would be a heavy burden for a 22-year-old, but Minten is already miles ahead of the curve in physicality and faceoff ability for a player his age.  

GOALTENDING

In 2024-25, Swayman took some heat from the B’s faithful for dragging his contract negotiations into training camp only to labor through a rotten season. Swayman wanted to make the Bruins sweat after an ugly arbitration battle the previous summer, and it affected his preparation for his first season as a bellcow. What a difference a year makes. Now, Swayman just about walks on water in Boston. It’s just a shame that his off nights were so off (NHL-most six games with 6+ GA). 

If Swayman’s occasional duds hadn’t dragged down his hockey card stats into merely “very good” territory (2.71 GAA, .907 SV%), he’d probably have joined Tim Thomas, Tuukka Rask, and his old pal Linus Ullmark as the Bruins’ fourth Vezina winner this century. A podium finish was still a well-earned acknowledgement that no netminder did more with less last season. Swayman’s inch-perfect positioning was the key to Boston’s surprise resurgence, and any doubts that he can thrive away from Ullmark in a workhorse role are sinking to the depths of the Charles River.

Joonas Korpisalo’s status as Boston’s backup became the topic of considerable discussion as former Providence Bruins standout Brandon Bussi, lost to waivers during last year’s preseason to accommodate Korpisalo, went on to backstop the Carolina Hurricanes to the Stanley Cup. For what it’s worth, the Bruins did hold their other AHL goalie, Michael DiPietro, in higher regard than Bussi at the time.

The B’s have a stellar track record of evaluating goalies, and DiPietro, a six-foot scrambler, has been one of the American League’s best for the past three seasons. Last year, DiPietro (hopefully) rounded out his minor league career with a .930 SV% and accompanying 1.9 GAA. If his NHL breakout goes anything like Bussi’s, Boston will have success in the crease even during Swayman’s ~30 nights off.

COACHING

A well-loved former Bruin with a lengthy developmental CV, Sturm was very much a vibes guy in year one, readily pressing the buttons of veterans and kids alike, rewarding toughness with ice time, and shuffling his massive deck of lineup options (more on those later) on a near-constant basis. You can’t argue with his bottom line; wins are usually the only statistic front offices grade their bench bosses on, anyway. Still, those wins will be tougher for Sturm to find in his sophomore season if his men don’t tighten things up in their own zone. 

The Clifton and Borgen acquisitions show Sweeney and club president Cam Neely are fully on board with the former Team Germany coach’s edict to make the Bruins Big and Bad again, but will do little to solve the team’s puck-moving woes. Two of the only Bruins’ defensemen who would even attempt a stretch pass, Henri Jokiharju and Mason Lohrei, have perennially found themselves in Sturm’s doghouse. The second-year coach’s defensive deployments and their ability to break the puck out could determine if Swayman’s in for another busy season.

One area where Sturm’s staff succeeded notably was on the power play, where assistant coach Steve Spott unlocked Geekie’s one-time threat (12 PPG) and helped increase the unit’s efficiency by more than 8 percent after a miserable 2024-25 (15.2%). 

Another was in goal, where the typically brilliant Bob Essensa helped Swayman rebuild his confidence on the back of his own forgettable campaign. Essensa never could get Korpisalo to perform above replacement level but has a more intriguing backup canvas to work with ahead of this season in the person of DiPietro.

ROOKIES

The Bruins’ recent player development track record has been checkered, so it must have been refreshing for the Bostonians who fill the TD Garden to see Minten (17 G, 35 P, +21) get Calder Trophy consideration, no matter how far down the ballot, in 2025-26. Hagens could repeat the trick next season. Hagens was considered the top 2025 prospect ahead of this draft year. Though he slid to sixth overall, the Long Island native’s pedigree was readily apparent when he outclassed college kids 25 minutes down the road with Boston College for much of his D+1 season. 

After five games (three in the playoffs) of late-season acclimation to the NHL, Hagens is ready to step into a full-time, top-nine role next season. A slight pivot whose hockey sense outweighs his short-term offensive potential probably doesn’t sound like a franchise changer to the uninitiated. Still, that profile has worked just fine in recent years for the rookies like Pittsburgh’s Ben Kindel and Buffalo’s Zach Benson, a player Bruins fans hated so much in the first round they couldn’t help but covet. If the Bruins’ season goes poorly enough for the top brass to consider moving pending UFA Zacha, Hagens could play a featured role by the end of it. He won’t light up the scoresheet just yet, but don’t expect him to make many rookie mistakes, either.

While Hagens can afford to start on the wings with Zacha, Minten, and Lindholm rounding out a respectable forward spine, one player who could help the B’s right away in his natural position as a puck-moving, second power-play type is lanky Quebecois D-man Frederic Brunet. He’s tall, skilled, and confident at both ends, so it’s baffling that Brunet might need to risk waivers after lighting up the AHL for 12 goals and 36 points in 65 games when Boston is so lacking in back-end skill. Sweeney has raved about him, but his subsequent roster maneuvering hasn’t left any clear space for Brunet to grow into the NHL without other moves first.

Another player some Bruins fans will be disappointed to see back in Providence is Latvian Olympian and former UMass standout Dans Locmelis. He is neither mean nor explosive, but Locmelis’s brain has helped him adjust to the pros quickly. Like Brunet, Locmelis has more experienced players like Alex Steeves and Mikey Eyssimont in his way for so much as a spot in the press box.

BURNING QUESTIONS

1. Who’s really on the team? The summer is nearly over, and the Bruins have an obscene amount of one-way contracts on their books. One-time top prospects Lohrei and Matthew Poitras seem totally peripheral to Sturm and Sweeney’s plans, but the latter has yet to cash in on their trade value while they still have any. Jokiharju and Steeves signed above-market extensions to fill depth roles that are now gone. Lukas Reichel briefly got a third chance at becoming an NHL scorer, but his fit in Boston doesn’t go much further than his Olympic association with Peterka. Eyssimont never really got off the ground as a planned component of the team’s newfound attitude. It feels like Boston isn’t done making moves, which is good. The club has logjams everywhere.

2. How good is Minten? You don’t win without a top center, but are there 32 top centers in the 32-team NHL? Plenty of playoff clubs have to make do with a capable 2C like, say, Zacha in the top job. Minten isn’t there yet, but you could see him quickly developing into a premium top-six pivot in the vein of Vincent Trocheck or Joel Eriksson Ek. If Minten can drag his scoring into the 50-60 point range, that Brandon Carlo trade will go from a steal to a full-blown catastrophe for the rival Toronto Maple Leafs. Another important note on Minten’s potential as a top-line player? He already reads Pastrnak very well; lines featuring the two of them won their minutes 22-7 (!) while keeping their chance shares in the black.

3. What about Peterka? I’m buying Minten’s stock like an insider trader with a tip. Peterka, meanwhile, is a mystery to me. He has boatloads of skill and chips in 20+ even-strength goals a year, but an astute GM in Utah’s Bill Armstrong just emphatically decided there’s nothing more to him than blowing the zone for rush chances one year into a max-term contract. Peterka’s floor is fine, but if Sweeney knows something that Armstrong doesn’t about Peterka’s ceiling, the Bruins will become a much more exciting team.

PREDICTION

Swapping Arvidsson, a very good player in his own right, out for Peterka, replacing Korpisalo with DiPietro, and letting Peeke walk while trading for Borgen should be enough to make the Bruins a better team, if only just. The gulf between Boston’s performance and its results last season, though, means they’d have to become much better to hold serve as the fourth-placed team in the lions’ den that is the Atlantic Division. 

The Florida Panthers stunk last year, remember, and since that will never happen again, one of the Atlantic’s five playoff berths, an unstable luxury in and of itself, is as good as gone. Swayman, McAvoy, and Pastrnak are talented enough to keep the Black and Gold in the mushy middle, at least. Whether the Bruins finish sixth or as low as last in their division could depend on how much Sweeney thinks a mid-year transition to tanking will affect his job security.