What We Learned: Boston Bruins are on a road to nowhere
Even if it's not true, there's one thing to be said about that "Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak don't get along anymore" rumour that popped in the Boston media on Friday.
It doesn't get floated if the Boston Bruins aren't losing a lot.
I'm not saying there's necessarily fire where there's this kind of smoke, especially interpersonally between players. Even if it were true, Marchand, like Elias Pettersson and JT Miller before him, will swear up and down that they've never even seen what smoke looks like. But at this point you gotta say it just seems that the decline of the Boston Bruins, which arguably started when Zdeno Chara took his services elsewhere and certainly became apparent when Patrice Bergeron called it a career, has well and truly happened.
It's not that they're playing badly, though of course they are. Yet they've played badly in recent years — just not for half a season — and come out the other side looking good. It's not that they're out of a playoff spot, because they aren't. But it feels as though that speaks more to the low quality of the rest of the field in the East, than the quality of the Bruins.
The problem, ultimately, is there's just growing recognition that this team, whatever the outcomes for the rest of the regular season, is sinking into the mud.
Firing the coach didn't work especially well, no help is apparently forthcoming from a low-yield farm system that has already been picked bare to prop up the NHL roster depth on the cheap, and the organization has almost no ammunition to make a shake-up-the-room trade that would meaningfully improve them. You can pipe-dream about Don Sweeney swinging a trade for Pettersson, or Miller if you're a real sicko (behavior I encourage), but the Bruins just don't have the NHL roster players or prospects to try to keep this train rolling. Trading a first-round pick anytime soon would feel like malpractice, and more specifically, like a desperate GM throwing anything they can find at the problem in what would be seen just about everywhere as a sad attempt to keep a job whose end date seems to be getting really close now.
What's interesting is that the Bruins aren't really a bad team, necessarily. Yes, they're losing a lot lately, and they're not playing well, but it's not like they're getting dominated every night in terms of possession and quality. If the power play could produce, if a couple of players each night stopped committing bad turnovers, we wouldn't be having this conversation. But the fact is that through half the season, and following a coaching change and endless line juggling, those problems persist, which tells you, again, this is a foundational issue.
So, even if they turn those around and still hold onto the playoff spot, or maybe even win a round (not impossible if the right pieces fall into place), I think we're past the point where we can say, "They just need a great prospect or free agent signing to turn it around." How's that Elias Lindholm deal working out, right?
The question is what do the Bruins look like in the future? And what I think is interesting is they actually have a decent amount of flexibility going into next season. We're talking only 13 players signed and almost $17.6 million in cap space. But almost everyone who is locked in are defensemen and both goalies, plus guys like Pastrnak, Lindholm, and Pavel Zacha through at least 2027. Would Sweeney — or literally any Bruins GM — be allowed to, say, trade Marchand and Trent Frederic in-season? What about Brandon Carlo? The Bruins don't ever feel like a "tear it down" team and the good news on that front is that they can credibly say they're not doing that because they have so many name-brand guys signed for a couple years to come. The bad news is that a lot of those name-brand guys aren't playing like they're worth the money and seem to have aged out of their primes.
There's probably just not a lot of opportunity to "rebuild on the fly," and even the players on the roster who may have been top-10 at their positions over the last several years just aren't carrying the water anymore.
That's just the way it goes for many teams that try to compete beyond their reasonably competitive windows, but you also can't take your hands off the controls and let the plane crash into a mountain. The problem, for many people in the organisation, is that the Bruins don't seem to have a concrete plan to proceed in any particular direction. Based on how the well-informed local media is discussing it, that's partly due to the recognition that they're not just backed into a corner, but they're facing the wall like the end of The Blair Witch Project.
It feels like, apart from a trade or two, they have no choice but to stay the course, even though everyone knows their course leads them nowhere. But hey, they finally beat the Panthers on Saturday, so maybe the turnaround begins now.
What We Learned
Anaheim Ducks: I assure you they would not care.
Boston Bruins: When you're on a six-game losing streak you take the wins where you can get them. But when the article says "they got outshot 42-17" in the second line, you're not fooling anyone.
Buffalo Sabres: Blowing it as badly as they did on Saturday, with the owner in attendance, just might actually force something to happen. I wonder if that "something" involves anything actually good or helpful.
Calgary Flames: Awesome quotes in here. Love seeing guys talk like this.
Carolina Hurricanes: Look who's trying to enter the Rocket Richard conversation.
Chicago: They're trying that "break the season into a bunch of five-game segments" approach now. You'll never guess how well it's working.
Colorado Avalanche: I swear I've never believed a trade rumor less.
Columbus Blue Jackets: Four in a row. Maybe the door is opening for them.
Dallas Stars: These guys are getting hot, too. This one is a little more protectable in my opinion.
Detroit Red Wings: A third super-hot team in a row. That's gotta be some sort of record.
Edmonton Oilers: Don't really want to have to "rally" against teams like this, but it's nice to be able to do it.
Florida Panthers: Can't say they haven't earned it.
Los Angeles Kings: Gotta be a lot of mixed feelings for this team starting a five-game road trip right now.
Minnesota Wild: What a crazy injury situation for the Wild right now. But at least some people are stepping up.
Montreal Canadiens: "Stun" feels a little unfair here.
Nashville Predators: The rug where the drawing board is must be getting pretty worn out these days.
New Jersey Devils: That's probably too many OT points to leave on the table.
New York Islanders: You can't be going around tying franchise records for the longest power-play drought. That's bad to do.
New York Rangers: Everything's fixed. They only have to jump five teams to get back into a playoff spot. Lock it in!!!
Ottawa Senators: There's an interesting tidbit kinda buried in here about who they want to trade. I won't spoil it but it's a good one.
Philadelphia Flyers: A 6-0 win in this particular circumstance has to feel pretty good.
Pittsburgh Penguins: Were you feeling good about that win over the Oilers? See you in hell.
San Jose Sharks: Interesting.
Seattle Kraken: I bet it's a lot of fun as a player to spot the other team a two-goal lead and then blow them out. Probably less so for a coach.
St. Louis Blues: This is one of those things where you wonder how "urgency" presents itself.
Tampa Bay Lightning: How is a player I think of as being one of the youngest men alive already at 600 career points? What?
Toronto Maple Leafs: Yeah travel was the problem for the Leafs in this one.
Utah [fill in the blank later]: Brutal news.
Vancouver Canucks: Yeah, ya know, now that you mention it, I think I heard something about this.
Vegas Golden Knights: Yup for sure.
Washington Capitals: Uh oh.
Winnipeg Jets: At some point I might run out of superlatives for the season he's having, but today is not that day.
Play of the Weekend
Not a bad first career goal for Ethen Frank.
https://x.com/sportsnet/status/1878279315906826247
Gold Star Award
Travis Konecny had four assists in the Cutter Bowl. All of them were primaries. Hard to have a better night at the office than that.
Minus of the Weekend
Fun stat: In the space of less than a week, Auston Matthews had a game where he was a plus-5 and a minus-6. That has to be tough to do.
Perfect HFBoards Trade Proposal of the Week
User "Pens2thecup871" might want to throw in a third-round pick:
To MTL:
2025 3rd Round Pick
To PIT:
