Bruins To Discuss Captain Vacancy Soon

The Bruins could finally name their next captain ahead of the 2026-27 season.

Or they couldn’t. According to Scott McLaughlin of WEEI, in speaking with Cam Neely on NESN, the Bruins brass of Neely, Don Sweeney, and Marco Sturm are all set to sit down and discuss how the leadership group will shape up heading into next season.

Last season, the Bruins competed in their first campaign without a captain since the 2001-02 season (that year they ran Joe Thornton, Martin Lapointe, Bill Guerin, and Don Sweeney all as assistant captains). Although the team wasn’t exactly wavered by a lack of primary leadership, making the playoffs after a year’s hiatus, the top candidates on the current roster beg the question time and time again.

Since Boston traded Brad Marchand to the Florida Panthers towards the end of the 2024-25 season, they’ve had a vacancy. The debate has slowly brewed with the team’s next two longest tenured players and stars in David Pastrnak and Charlie McAvoy. Neely’s comments, however, spoke as if the Bruins front office isn’t in any rush to name either player.

“I don’t know if you necessarily need to have a guy unless there is that one guy that really stands out,” Neely spoke on the NESN Jimmy Fund Telethon, “From [Ray] Bourque, [Zdeno] Chara, [Patrice] Bergeron. We like leaders, not followers. So you can hopefully have 20 leaders. That’s the one thing that we look at: who is going to help lead the team? Maybe it’s more of a tradition in hockey where you have a letter on your sweater. Don [Sweeney], Marco, and I are going to sit down shortly to talk about that.”

So, is either option better? In McAvoy’s case, his missed time doesn’t help, but then again plays to his favor, considering all the injuries and turmoil he experienced over the past two seasons, dating back to the season-ending injury suffered at the 4 Nations Face-off. Despite those numerous setbacks, the 28-year-old defender still posted career-high numbers in a 60+ point campaign that saw him also play an integral defensive role on Team USA en route to the nation’s first Gold medal at the Winter Olympics in Milan. Being there and having done that adds to his pedigree, along with leading by example through everything the defender had to experience to battle back to full health.

Having said all that, McAvoy’s six-game suspension caused by a late-game slash on Zach Benson in the Bruins’ dying moments of Game 6 against Buffalo could stain the resumé built, but given the antics that Marchand has displayed on ice in his previous instances, this isn’t too substantial in consideration.

Pastrnak, on the other hand, has stepped up in a vocal sense. While being the clutch goal-scorer Boston has needed in several key moments, he also demonstrated growth over the past few seasons in terms of elevating his linemates. Most notably, heightening Morgan Geekie into a back-to-back 30-goal scorer and providing guidance to Fraser Minten and Marat Khusnutdinov in their top-line roles alongside him. After multiple 60-assist campaigns, he highlighted last year, tallying 71 total dimes to his teammates. His rising voice in the changing of the guard was highlighted during the playoffs in Game 4, where, on an episode of Behind the B (seen at 17:27), he was depicted yelling at the team, down 4-0 to the Sabres.

The case for either top player makes this a ‘good problem’ for the Bruins to have. The outer core has veteran voices in Nikita Zadorov, Hampus Lindholm, and Elias Lindholm among the notable elders in Boston’s locker room. Many Bruins on the team, including Sturm, were fond of the locker room’s ability to have multiple voices and perspectives to bank on throughout the tumultuous ups and downs the team had in 2025-26. Then again, it’s curious to wonder why Boston has hesitated to put a ring on a finger and commit to a No. 1 voice to lean on.