Bruins prospects once again catching a lot of flak

The written content on the EP Rinkside site, as opposed to the massive database of players, can be a little more hit or miss, and that’s where we find ourselves after they produced content that amounts to an NHL ranking of organizational prospect systems. Once again one of these prospect-type hockey sites had the B’s ranked dead last at 32nd in the league headed into the 2024-25 NHL season. Somebody named JD Burke, who calls himself an “iconoclastic take machine” has decided that literally everybody in the NHL is better than the Bruins when it comes to the prospect game.

“I'm leading off the series by looking at a system that has legitimate NHL upside but limited star power and depth,” proclaimed Burke in a tweet while including a link back to his story.

Amazingly, EP Rinkside also ranked Boston’s top 16 organizational prospects and somehow didn’t have 22-year-old Riley Duran included among them while coming off a strong late-season stint with the Providence Bruins, and after B’s general manager Don Sweeney ticked him off by name as a player who would be getting NHL looks and consideration during training camp.

It feels like that might have been another glaring error on their part when it comes to the Black and Gold as it’s an odd omission for a 2020 draft pick coming off three strong seasons at Providence College.

“I think we've made some hard decisions when players [show that they are NHL ready],” said Sweeney back at the beginning of July during Bruins development camp. “I think this year in Poitras and Beecher were good examples of [young players seizing the opportunity]. That they played well enough they earned their opportunity, and I would say that [Georgii Merkulov] and [Fabian Lysell] or Riley Duran, keep going down the list, [have a chance at winning an NHL job].

“Just pin your ears back, train your a-- off this summer, and come with the intent that there'll be an opportunity here. If you're the best player, then we find a way to get you in the [Boston Bruins] lineup. You [just] have to sustain it as you're going along.”

The “sustaining it” part was a challenge that Poitras couldn’t quite master last season as his performance waned and ultimately a shoulder surgery ended his first pro season. But Poitras is coming back this season as a young, playmaking center that will either add to Boston’s suddenly plentiful center situation at the NHL level or become an exciting young offensive talent at the AHL level ready to sharpen the offensive skills that dazzled everybody at training camp a year ago.

Either way, Poitras is a player that many of these draft/prospect expert types really missed on even as the pivot admittedly has some work to do when it comes to skating speed and improving his explosiveness.

In saddling the B’s with the truly lackluster ranking, Burke notes the Bruins' lack of first-round picks and draft picks in general due to trades they have routinely made at trade deadlines to land players like Hampus Lindholm, Dmitry Orlov, Garnett Hathaway and Tyler Bertuzzi in recent years, and that “the end result is a diverse prospect stable with legitimate blue-chip talent and credible depth, which may be a bit better than our last-place billing in this year's ranking.”

Talk about meekly hedging your bets after labeling them as the NHL’s worst at something!

Burke may truly be earnest about his dismissive assessment of the Bruins draft-and-development system, but it’s also a “take” that’s going to garner some attention given the big following behind the Black and Gold.

The bottom line is that it all feels like a very flawed evaluation coming off two straight seasons where the B’s talent pipeline was routinely ranked dead last, but then proceeded to a 2023-24 NHL campaign where Boston produced Matt Poitras, Mason Lohrei, Johnny Beecher and Justin Brazeau as legit NHL contributors.

That’s four rookies playing impactful roles for an NHL playoff team and Stanley Cup contender that simply doesn’t happen on a team with a dreadful draft-and-development system.

Lohrei, in particular, looks like he’s about to ascend into lofty NHL status as an impact offensive defenseman for the Bruins, and that ascension is making many hockey prospect gurus and draftniks look like they kind of don’t know what they’re doing.

The Athletic has routinely slagged the Bruins' prospect cupboard over the last few seasons, so it’s perhaps no surprise that only one prospect cracked the NHL’s top-100 list with Lysell coming in at No. 88 with a genuine shot to crack the Boston lineup and win a top-6 forward spot this season. 

But how foolish are all of these talent evaluators going to look this season if players like Duran, Merkulov and Lysell break through into significant roles for a Bruins team that’s supposed to be short on prospects?

Let’s revisit these expert rankings in a couple of months and see just how productive Boston’s young players are after a banner year that proved a lot of these folks wrong last season.