To get up to speed, the Bruins’ top priority is front and center during pivot to offseason

Speed, specifically the desire to add more of it to their skill sets, was front and center on the minds of Fraser Minten and James Hagens last Sunday as they departed for the summer. Minten headed west to his parent’s apartment in downtown Vancouver and Hagens, who’ll spend much of the offseason in the Hub, hurried off to join Team USA at the IIHF World Championship in Switzerland.

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What would help the Bruins most these days is a speedy ascension of both Minten and Hagens to high-end center roles, ideally as candidates for No. 1 pivot in the Black and Gold offense.

Until the Bruins find a bona fide answer to that C1 spot, left vacant now for the three seasons Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci have been retired, it’s an offense that remains under repair — and a team that cannot be considered a serious Stanley Cup contender.

Elias Lindholm, his game hindered for a second year by a back injury, has not come close to filling the top spot adequately since arriving here on his big money, unrestricted free agency payday (seven years/$54.25 million) in July 2024. Pavel Zacha, their best answer for that job today, proved to be a dynamic fit this season at second-line center with wingers Casey Mittelstadt and Viktor Arvidsson. If Arvidsson signs a contract extension, Zacha will remain coach Marco Sturm’s choice to stay in that No. 2 hole.

“Whether either become No. 1 centers, it’s up to them … what the path is for them,” noted team president Cam Neely when I asked at the end-of-season presser about the Minten/Hagens trajectory to the C1 role. “We want to give these guys every opportunity to take a job that’s staring at them. We all in this room recognize that we don’t have a true No. 1 center and that’s something we want to try to rectify.”

The issue is far beyond wanting a remedy. The fix is imperative.

Neely briefly touched on potential immediate answers, which would point to a trade or a free agent hire over the summer, underscoring that the C-suite is prepared to pursue a C1 remedy prior to October.

“It’s something that we know is needed,” Neely reiterated.

Neely’s Hall of Fame playing career at right wing was aided greatly by such center distributors as Craig Janney and Adam Oates. He gets the value and the need for a top-of-the-order rainmaker.

General manager Don Sweeney, asked his thoughts on the subject, said engaging in trade talks for that kind of high-end talent have led other GMs to remind him, “there’s not even 32 of them in the league.” Once was the time the Bruins had two of them in Bergeron and Krejci.

Lindholm, who plugged into the top spot most of the season, was a tiny bit more productive than in his first season with the team. Minten and Zacha also had reps in the middle of the first line. Minten looks to be the right cut to be a first- or second-line pivot, but isn’t ready for that workload yet. Hagens, now with but five games on his NHL résumé, most likely will start next season as a winger.

“I do like him,” said Sturm when asked about Hagens at pivot. “I want to see him at some point probably as a center. He’s just not there yet. We have to see where it’s going to go.”

Vital to keep in mind: C1 in the NHL typically is no country for young men. Bergeron became one of the game’s best, most complete pivots. He entered the NHL as a winger, albeit straight out of junior hockey at age 18, and was in his mid-20s when he fully owned and executed the center role. He was 26 when winning his first of a record six Selke Trophies in 2012.

The big-name center headed for the UFA market is Evgeni Malkin, the career Penguins great. He scored 61 points in 56 games this season for an aged club that had missed the playoffs three years in a row. Malkin also will turn 40 this summer (July 31), and though an upgrade over the much younger Lindholm (31), he’s too old a fit after Sturm, Sweeney, and Neely said in recent days there was a need to improve team speed.

“We feel pretty good this year that, by committee, our guys did a good job [at center],” said Sweeney.

For both Hagens and Minten, the GM said he hoped, “they hit their high side.”

“Sometimes,” added Sweeney, regarding the approach to the No. 1 slot, “it has to be by committee — and you hope you grow and strike oil.”

The 21-year-old Minten played in all 88 games (six in the playoffs), working mostly at C3 with a variety of wingers who toggled between the first and third line. Line No. 2, anchored by Zacha, became a constant, along with the fourth-line trio that had Sean Kuraly (also now at Worlds with Team USA) between Tanner Jeannot and Mark Kastelic. The fact that the first- and third-line combos changed so frequently underscored, in large part, that Lindholm just wasn’t the guy for the top of the order.

Minten, the lead hope to ascend, will train regularly this offseason with a bunch of NHLers in Burnaby, British Columbia, just outside Vancouver. He said he’ll be looking to add core strength, muscle, and … speed. He had a close-up look this season at what it takes to be a top-six regular.

“It’s really tough to do,” he said. “It’s big minutes for everybody in those roles. They’re usually on power play and penalty kill. And if those players don’t play well, it usually means you lose. So you see how integral those players are to a winning team. I try to learn from them, watch them, and try to be one of those guys myself.”

The question of what it takes to become a C1 is not something he’s asked himself, at least not “specifically framed that way,” he said.

“But,” he added, ”you want to be as good as you can.”

The Bruins scored only 12 goals, three of those by David Pastrnak, in the six playoff games vs. the Sabres. A review of the dozen strikes found that seven were off the rush, which includes the Morgan Geekie backhand flip from center ice in Game 2.

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Of the five other goals, products of offensive zone possession of varying times, only two could be credited to forwards delivering from tough areas close to the net.

Kuraly scored one, though it came in mop-up time, trimming back a 6-0 Sabres lead with less than a minute to go in Game 4.

Lindholm had the other, connecting for the 1-1 equalizer in Game 5 (Pastrnak eventually with the overtime winner). Lindholm squeezed off a bid at the goal line, near the right post, and then potted from short range in the slot when the puck squibbed free after the first attempt.

Six games, a total of two goals in the tight-and-fight area. While the Sabres repeatedly made life and times miserable for Jeremy Swayman with grunt work around the net, the Bruins were remarkably low temp around goalies Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen and Alex Lyon. Their most damaging shot ultimately proved to be Geekie’s Game 2 lob job, which set the stage for coach Lindy Ruff to bring in Lyon from the bullpen in the third period and use him the rest of the way.

All in all, too light an approach around the Sabres’ net, one that grew weaker when Arvidsson exited Game 4 with a fractured rib. His two goals were off the rush, not what Sturm calls “garbage goals” so vital at playoff time. But Arvidsson, especially when healthy in the second half of the season, had a penchant for zipping in and out of high-danger areas. The Sabres outscored the Bruins, 8-4, from the point Arvidsson exited Game 4.

Overall, Sweeney did not sound disappointed by the effort around the net, though he noted the impact of losing Arvidsson, which led to line changes throughout the rest of the series.

“That line had been really effective all year long, able to get us a goal in a key moment of a hockey game,” said Sweeney. “That’s part of the process of us to continue to deepen our roster, to add some speed to our roster, so that when Marco wants to flip the switch and change the systems, he feels more comfortable [doing it].“

Geekie and Pastrnak both said while packing up for the summer that they feel the need to land more shots on net next season.

The Bruins’ hardest-shooting forward, Geekie never has been a high-volume shooter. He averaged 140 shots and 25 goals his first two seasons in Boston. He hit the net 181 times this season and scored a career-high 39 times. He and Predators defenseman Roman Josi finished tied for 77th in shots on goal.

Geekie’s shooting is clearly on the upswing, in part because in 2024-25 he established himself as an essential top-six component. With a bona fide center dishing him the puck to high-danger areas, he could land 250-300 shots and challenge for 50 goals.

Pastrnak in recent years has run shoulder to shoulder with the game’s most prolific shooters. He led the league with 407 shots on net in 2022-23. He averaged 355 shots and 48 goals the last four seasons, then fell off to 261 shots and 29 goals this season, in part because he evolved as more of a passer-playmaker on a power play that ranked third in the league up to the Olympic break. His shots dropped by 26.5 percent and his goals by 39.5 percent.

The Bruins’ power play slumped to its 2024-25 ineptitude over the final third of this season. Pastrnak scored only seven goals across those 27 games, one on the man advantage.

“I definitely need to get back more to the shooting,” he said. “I’ve been playmaking a lot on the power play and that sometimes can take away the confidence from goal scoring, right? I could sense it sometimes during the year, like I would get a chance and maybe rushed it out or didn’t have the confidence to make the best shot. I have to get back to shooting. I’m still going to make plays when I see someone in better position to score than me, but definitely I want to score more goals.”

Though he again reached the 100-point plateau, post-Olympics Pastrnak was not as sharp or productive as he was before heading off to Milan with Team Czechia.

Asked if he felt the Games drained him more than he expected, he said, “Oh, yeah, of course, it’s our tournament. The dream came true for me. I’ve been waiting for that chance my whole career, pretty much, over here in the NHL. … It was a hard tournament and a lot of guys had slower starts after coming back from the Olympics, but at the same time, it’s the Olympics.”

Despite the toll of the Games and whatever best-on-best tournaments the league folds into the schedule going forward, Pastrnak remains a proponent of the international interludes.

“Listen, yeah, every guy takes pride in representing their country,” he said.

The Maple Leafs’ choice of John Chayka as their new general manager rang the crossbar of discord in Toronto, particularly among a media corps skeptical over his squirrely past as GM of the Arizona Coyotes — a job he abruptly quit with three years left on his deal. The NHL later suspended Chayka from working in the league for a year because of “conduct detrimental to the league and game” when he was found to have scheduled a scouting combine for draft prospects during his days in Arizona. Private combines are considered a gross violation of league rules. Some 24 hours after announcing Chayka’s hiring, the Maple Leafs won the draft lottery and will be picking first (to the Bruins’ chagrin) on June 26 in Buffalo. Rumors began circulating in Toronto before Chayka took over that their top goal scorer, Auston Matthews, will ask to be traded this summer. Ownership had to know the controversy that would come with putting Chayka in charge. It’s possible they only made the move in order for him to gut the payroll (moving Matthews off the books at $13.25 million would be a start), clean out the cabinet, and start all over — with a new, squeaky-clean GM hired to take Chayka’s place … Minten, a piano player from his childhood days, said he looked forward to logging time at the black-and-white keys once home in Vancouver, noting he’d asked pal Mason Lohrei to store his portable keyboard in Boston for the summer. One of Minten’s favorite pieces of late: “Nuvole Bianche” by Italian pianist/composer Ludovico Einaudi. Another, he said, is “Clair de Lune” by Claude Debussy. “That’s beautiful,” he said, “but I’m not that good at it right now. I’ve got some work to do on that one.” … Hampus Lindholm, who took up surfing during his years in Anahiem with the Ducks, said he’d be back on the board this summer when home in Sweden, while acknowledging the waves there aren’t as good as SoCal. The veteran blue liner is looking forward to spending a summer not rehabbing his knee, which last season required two surgeries and an arduous offseason. He found out in February 2025, after the league shut down for the 4 Nations Face-Off, that the second surgery was necessary … The Avalanche look like they have the most solid playoff roster, but the Hurricanes top the chart for fast-and-furious execution. If they win the Stanley Cup, the talk of the summer will be teams looking for speed, speed, and more speed. Asked if the Hurricanes offered a model as to where the Bruins need to be for speed and pace of play, Sturm offered, “Every team is built different. Carolina had to fail how many years now? I feel like they’re getting there. They look really, really good, but they had to fail, I don’t know how many years. They added good pieces and stuck with their core, so good on them. The way they play … do I personally agree on everything the way they play? No. That’s the beauty of coaching.” The Hurricanes logged nine consecutive DNQ seasons prior to returning to the playoffs in 2019. They rolled the Senators, 4-0, in Round 1 this season, and are on track to reach a fourth Eastern Conference Final in eight seasons. The distant sons of the Forever .500s on Saturday night played their 94th postseason game since ending their long playoff drought. In all their years in Hartford (1979-97), they played in only nine series, a total of 49 games (18-31). Next spring will be 30 years since “Brass Bonanza” headed off to Tobacco Road.

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