Bruins Must Be Sellers at Trade Deadline

The President of the Boston Bruins, Cam Neely, was vague when addressing the team's plans for the 2025 NHL Trade Deadline. He recently told NHL.com that they'd have to see where things stand and they are preparing for the possibility of buying and selling at the deadline.

It was an honest, but avoidant answer for the Bruins. The team is still firmly in the playoff hunt in the Eastern Conference, and it's leaving hope that this team can add a piece and retool themselves into contender status. The problem is that this hope is far greater than the reality, and the Bruins should undoubtedly be sellers at this year's deadline.

The Bruins do not have a championship roster. To their management's credit, it's not due to lack of effort. They went through a rough negotiating process with starting goaltender Jeremy Swayman and signed two marquee free agents this past summer in Elias Lindholm and Nikita Zadorov. The additions were supposed to round out the top-six forward group and the blue line on a Stanley Cup hopeful. It hasn't worked however, but Neely doesn't want to give up on the present to improve the future.

"We still feel like we’ve got a playoff team here," he said. "And we certainly don’t want to jeopardize getting out of the playoffs because we made some moves that may be good for the future, but not good for the present."

The problem is that they aren't the complimentary pieces that the Bruins' core needed. David Pastrnak, the team's best player, has found better chemistry with Pavel Zacha than Lindholm. That's excellent in theory, but Zacha isn't a top-line center and that reality will come back to bite when it matters the most. Lindholm meanwhile isn't close to top-line production either, with just 22 points in 46 games.

So, the Bruins can cling to their false hope of being a sneaky contender. After all, you just have to get into the playoffs, right? Anything can happen once you're in.

Or the Bruins can look at this roster and see that while they are a decent team, maybe even a good one, it's not anywhere close to a championship one. They have assets, like forward Trent Frederic, who is on an expiring contract and could net the team a prospect or draft pick that could help more than a first-round playoff exit could.

It's time to call it in, Boston Bruins nation. It was a valiant effort to put this organization into the Stanley Cup conversation, but it's come up short this year. They can continue hoping that things turn around, but the Bruins must come to their senses and become a seller at this year's NHL Trade Deadline.