Bruins Prospect Mason Langenbrunner Retires

The Bruins had until Aug. 15 to sign 2020 fifth-round pick Mason Langenbrunner to his entry-level contract after he finished his senior season at Harvard this past spring. However, he won’t be signing with Boston – or anywhere else, for that matter. The 23-year-old defenseman is hanging up the skates without ever playing a professional game, Kevin Paul Dupont of the Boston Globe wrote Saturday.

Langenbrunner, the son of longtime NHLer and now-former Bruins assistant general manager Jamie Langenbrunner, captained the Crimson last season to conclude his collegiate career. He was a fifth-round pick by the B’s in 2020 out of Eden Prairie High School in Minnesota and, since he was born just two days before the cutoff for that year’s draft, still had another year of high school hockey ahead of him before making the jump to high-level junior hockey in the USHL with the Fargo Force for 2021-22.

Langenbrunner was one-and-done in Fargo before getting into Harvard. While the 6’3″ righty had great offensive flashes in high school, he was never more than a depth option in Cambridge. He was a mainstay in the lineup, cracking the 30-game mark every year, but only totaled a 9-17–26 scoring line with a -5 record in 130 career outings.

Instead of heading into pro hockey, Langenbrunner is already leveraging his business degree as a partner in a pair of start-up companies, according to Dupont. As for his father, Jamie left Boston back in May after 11 years in the B’s front office to join the Predators as a special assistant to their new GM, Chris MacFarland.

Langenbrunner was one of three prospects coming out of college that Boston had to sign by the Aug. 15 deadline to retain their rights. It doesn’t look like they’ll be retaining forward Oskar Jellvik from that group, either – the 2021 fifth-rounder signed with Sweden’s Rögle BK in May after wrapping up an injury-plagued senior year at Boston College. There are still negotiations to be held with goaltender Philip Svedebäck, a 2021 fourth-rounder who backstopped Providence College to a Hockey East regular-season championship this year.