Just two years after setting an all-time record for points in a single NHL season, the Boston Bruins are at a crossroads.
On Saturday, they dropped their eighth-straight game as they finished out a five-game road trip with a 2-1 loss to the Detroit Red Wings. With just one overtime loss among the bunch, it’s the third time this season that they’ve gone winless for five or more games in a row.
With 10 games remaining, the Bruins have fallen to 30-35-9 for 69 points in 74 games. Eight points out of the second wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference on Sunday, it’s all-but guaranteed that their streak of eight consecutive playoff appearances, which is tied for the active NHL lead, is about to come to an end.
In the past, Boston has been able to shake off adversity and remain successful. But this year has been different.
No More Goalie Hugs
Maybe the tide changed when Linus Ullmark was traded to the Ottawa Senators on June 24, 2024?
That put an end to the goalie hugs that Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman had shared after wins for three seasons.
Salary-cap constraints suggested that the Bruins wouldn’t be able to keep both members of their platoon, who had shared the workload and functioned as a true tandem. But moving Ullmark so early in the offseason, when he had one year remaining on his contract, handed bargaining leverage to Swayman.
The restricted free agent went on to exert every ounce of his power, holding out through training camp before signing an eight-year deal with a cap hit of $8.25 million on Oct. 6, two days before the regular season began.
Whether it was the drama of the negotiations or missing out on training camp and pre-season, Swayman stumbled out to a 3-4-1 record and .884 record in October, and hasn’t recovered. Through 52 starts, he’s now at 20-26-6 with an .893 save percentage and minus-7.6 goals saved above expected, per MoneyPuck. Last season, he finished out the year at a sparkling plus-18.4 GSAE, fourth-best in the league.
Montgomery Fired
The slow start also seemed to spark early tension between the Bruins’ front office and their head coach. Just 20 games into the season, with a record of 8-9-3, GM Don Sweeney fired Jim Montgomery, who had been awarded the Jack Adams Trophy as the NHL’s coach of the year in 2022-23.
It took Montgomery just five days to find a new job, with the St. Louis Blues. And while his hiring didn’t pay immediate dividends, the Blues have now won their last nine games while the Bruins have floundered, and have worked their way back into playoff position.
Associate coach Joe Sacco was appointed as Montgomery’s replacement in Boston. Back in a head job for the first time in more than a decade, his record is 22-26-6 for 50 points in 54 games, suggesting that the Bruins will be back in the coaching market when this season comes to an end.
To be fair, Boston has also been bitten hard by the injuries to key players. Workhorse defenseman Hampus Lindholm was lost for the year even before Montgomery was fired, playing just 17 games before suffering a fractured kneecap that required surgery. Then, Charlie McAvoy missed seven games in January with an upper-body issue before suffering a shoulder injury during the 4 Nations Face-Off. He started skating with the team against last week.
Marchand Jumps Ship
Captain Brad Marchand, now 36, also suffered an upper-body injury in early March, and has undergone multiple surgeries over the past few years. While he was knocked out of action, the pending unrestricted free agent and lifelong Bruin met with management about a contract extension.
When the two sides couldn’t see eye to eye, Sweeney dealt him to a preferred destination on deadline day. And to the horror of Boston hockey fans, Marchand is now playing for the same team that ended their squad’s playoff hopes prematurely in the last two years — the Florida Panthers.
Prior to the deadline, Sweeney also dealt away three other players who have been important parts of the team’s identity for the last several years — Boston-area native Charlie Coyle, physical impending free agent Trent Frederic and blue-line mainstay Brandon Carlo.
The returns might help the team better down the road, and the Bruins had already been hard-pressed to deliver results before the deadline. Now, they’re on a rudderless ship, drifting aimlessly toward the end of the year.
Even Swayman’s challenge to fight Darcy Kuemper in Los Angeles last week failed to galvanize the group.
What Now?
When Zdeno Chara arrived in Boston and slapped the ‘C’ on his chest in 2006, the Bruins entered an era of strong leadership and built a winning culture. That resulted in a Stanley Cup in 2011, two other trips to the Final, and four Presidents’ Trophies. Patrice Bergeron maintained the standard after Chara’s departure, but the leadership void is now palpable.
When McAvoy returns, he and David Pastrnak will be left to pick up the pieces in the dressing room, trying to bring together a group that has changed dramatically and most likely work with a to-be-determined new coach.
With the foundation of the franchise seemingly crumbling, will ownership look to make a change at the management level with franchise legend and team president Cam Neely, who has been in the front office since 2007? Or Sweeney, who became GM in 2015 after starting his management path as director of player development with Boston in 2006?
As a perennial contender, the Bruins have dealt away many draft picks and young players over the years, so their prospect pool is thin — ranked 30th out of 32 teams by The Athletic in January.
Forward Matt Poitras showed promise as an 18-year-old after he was drafted in the second round in 2023, but his rookie season ended prematurely due to a shoulder injury. This year, he has bounced back and forth between the NHL and the AHL Providence Bruins. Fraser Minten, a second-round pick from 2022 who was acquired from the Toronto Maple Leafs in the Carlo trade, adds depth as a well-respected two-way center who plays a mature game.
Over the last year, the Bruins pre-emptively cut ties with three major potential UFAs rather than extending them — Ullmark, Marchand and Frederic. Carlo has one more year remaining on his deal, and Coyle has two.
That leaves the Boston Bruins with just 11 NHL-level players signed for next season and more than $28 million in potential cap space according to PuckPedia. They’re positioned to go big-game hunting — as they did one year ago when they landed Elias Lindholm and Nikita Zadorov. But this summer’s large salary-cap increase will bring plenty of competition, so the winds of inflation will be blowly strongly in a seller’s market.