Bruins starting to make offseason moves

While the eyes of the hockey world are still firmly trained on a Stanley Cup Final between the Florida Panthers and Edmonton Oilers that’s become very entertaining, the majority of the NHL teams on the outside like the Boston Bruins are decidedly back to work.

With that in mind, B’s general manager Don Sweeney and Bruins management have begun informing some looming free agents that they won’t be in the Black and Gold future plans for next season and beyond. Some free agents in question like Jake DeBrusk and Pat Maroon will probably go down to the wire as the B’s go through their decision-making process while keeping their options fully open with players that could still return, but others are probably best served with a fresh start in another NHL organization.

One of those players is Swedish forward Oskar Steen, who has been informed that he won’t be returning to Boston for next season as he approaches unrestricted free agency for the first time in his career. Steen’s agent Joakim Persson confirmed to Swedish media outlet VF that Steen will be hitting the open market on July 1 after becoming a Group VI free agent this summer.

“Boston has given us permission to already start talking to other teams to see what interest there is,” said Persson to VF. “So those are the conversations we are in the middle of now, and I’m going over to Vegas for the NHL draft on July 28-29 and continue to have conversations and dialogues there.”

None of this is surprising after the 26-year-old Steen was waived midseason and sent down to Providence after managing just one goal in 34 games during his longest NHL stretch to date.  

The offensive struggle was real for Steen, who ranked as one of the least efficient offensive players in the entire league last season.

Steen was much more effective in the AHL with 12 goals and 16 points in 25 games for the P-Bruins, and to his credit he was asked more to play a physical, checking role as a fourth liner when up with the NHL club.

But the bottom line is that Jakub Lauko is younger, faster, more involved physically and has shown more upside when it comes to providing flashes of offense at the NHL level in a fourth line-type role. Steen has four goals and eight points in 60 career NHL games over the last four seasons logging time in Boston and has never shown a consistent ability to bring any secondary offense to the table.

So he’ll be moving on after turning out to be a pretty solid sixth-round pick that the Bruins selected back in the 2016 NHL Draft that’s proven to be a good depth piece for the last handful of years.

It makes you begin to wonder what other players will be moving on for the Black and Gold with NHL free agency just a couple of weeks away at this point.

One name that sounds destined to return, though, is Danton Heinen, who is approaching free agency after signing with the Bruins after winning an NHL roster spot following a tryout contract during training camp. The 28-year-old finished with 17 goals and 36 points in 74 games before getting banged up physically during the playoffs, and was a versatile, productive 200-foot player for the Bruins in his second go-round with the organization.

None of this even mentions that Jim Montgomery seemed to get the best out of Heinen after reuniting with him in Boston following their time together at the University of Denver.

“He’s kind of been a glue guy,” said Montgomery of Heinen during the season. “Someone we can move around. He started on the fourth line, went to the third line. Spent some time in the top-six (forwards) then bounced back down to the third and fourth lines where he was really helping us. Been a really good part of our penalty kill, one of our top-six forwards at penalty kills.”

By the end of the NHL campaign, he was playing in a top-6 role on the wing with Pavel Zacha and David Pastrnak, which was as much a statement about his quality, consistently level of play as it was a bit of an indictment that the B’s didn’t have enough top-6 forwards for a top tier Eastern Conference playoff team.