A Bruins season that started with so much hope has come to a merciful end
"Having the season be over now is just something that is tough to process."
COMMENTARY
The Bruins’ “Shirts Off Our Backs” ceremony stands as a time-honored tradition at the end of an 82-game gauntlet.
Beyond its sentimentality, the sight of the Bruins doling out their sweat-soaked sweaters to their fans routinely served as the end of one chapter — and the start of a spring inundated with fan banners, elevated blood pressure, and the sweet sounds of Audioslave blaring over the TD Garden speakers.
But six months after the Bruins opened a new campaign in South Florida, a season that once started with so much promise was perhaps best encapsulated by Tuesday’s postgame ceremony on Causeway Street.
While franchise fixtures like David Pastrnak were on hand to hand off their jerseys following Boston’s 5-4 overtime loss to the Devils, familiar faces like captain Brad Marchand, Charlie Coyle, Brandon Carlo, Trent Frederic, and others were nowhere to be found.
Another key cog in Charlie McAvoy gave away one of his jerseys while wearing a suit — a byproduct of his season getting cut short in February amid a year rife with injuries and setbacks.
As Marchand and the rest of that crop of trade deadline cast-offs brace for Cup runs in red, blue, white, and orange sweaters, the black-and-gold garb handed out to fans on Tuesday night featured a mix of new faces, AHL vets and prospects just cutting their teeth at hockey’s highest level.
Such is the state of a Bruins roster torn down to the studs following a deadline sell-off. A roster that is now bracing for a long offseason after a season that went off the rails.
“Sad it’s over, obviously,” Pastrnak — he of 106 points in an otherwise rudderless season — said postgame. “That’s pretty much the only answer I can give you right now. … It’s tough. You obviously want to keep playing as a player. Leave it at that, I guess.”
For the first time in nearly a decade, the Bruins are on the outside looking at the Stanley Cup Playoffs — a scenario that few expected, to say the least.
If anything, the 2024-25 Bruins were seemingly poised to build off the growth showcased last spring when a ragtag roster filled with bargain-bin signings and veteran pickups overcame a Game 7 thriller against Toronto and pushed the Panthers to six games in the next round.
Fresh off a stellar playoff run from Jeremy Swayman (.933 save percentage), the Bruins seemingly had their foundation secured between Pastrnak, Swayman, and McAvoy.
A free-agent spending spree seemingly addressed the Bruins’ most pressing needs. In Elias Lindholm, Boston seemingly added the two-way, top-six pivot it desperately desired following the retirements of Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci.
Bringing in a bruising blueliner in Nikita Zadorov gave the Bruins the sandpaper it thought it required for playoff action after getting punched out by the Panthers during back-to-back playoff runs.
Even as contract talks stalled between Boston and Swayman’s camp this summer, the Bruins believed they had a franchise goalie in place ready to run with a No. 1 role after trading away Linus Ullmark in June — while the addition of Zadorov gave Boston a six-man D corps with an average profile of 6-foot-4 and 220 pounds.
“Well, Elias — I mean, his 200-foot game is remarkable. I don’t want to put him in the Patrice [Bergeron] category, but he’s Patrice-like,” Cam Neely said in September. “And Zadorov, I mean, a big back end like that, it just solidifies our back end.
“I mean, our back end is big, and they got some beef to them, which I think bodes well in the playoffs. I mean, you got to get to the playoffs, but I think we’re built a little bit stronger for the playoffs.”
The vibes were high in Boston. And then the hockey happened.
It didn’t take long for things to snowball.
A disjointed training camp led to several lineup regulars playing catch-up, with the drama surrounding Swayman’s contract negotiations lingering over the team through October.
By the time Swayman inked a hefty new deal with Boston, the Bruins were already set to fly down to Florida — where an ill-prepared team was promptly popped in the mouth by the Panthers again by way of a 6-4 loss.
It was a sign of things to come. With Swayman struggling to find his game (.892 save percentage) and Boston’s defensive structure splintering, the Bruins coughed up six or more goals a whopping 15 times this season.
Boston’s decline on defense and in net was not expected. Their inability to put pucks into twine was a forecasted flaw that became fatal in record time.
Beyond failing to account for the free-agency exit of Jake DeBrusk, the Bruins were done in by several players like Coyle and Frederic regressed from their career-high scoring outputs from 2023-24.
Elias Lindholm struggled to find chemistry with Pastrnak until the final weeks of the regular season, with Boston’s top free-agent pickup spending most of the year mired in a middle-six no man’s land.
Beyond Pastrnak’s playmaking brilliance and a 33-goal breakout campaign from Morgan Geekie, Boston’s offense was largely listless all season.
The Bruins closed out the year 27th in the league in goals per game (2.71), while their power play operated at a 15.2 percent clip (29th overall).
That inability to score offered little breathing room for Swayman and a Bruins defense that quickly took on water — starting when Hampus Lindholm suffered a fractured patella on Nov. 12, ending his season after just 17 games.
Just a week later, the Bruins fired head coach Jim Montgomery amid an uninspired start.
A mid-season jolt following Joe Sacco’s appointment as interim head coach eventually flatlined as Boston’s extensive flaws once again took hold on the ice.
By the time McAvoy went down with both an AC joint injury and an infection in his shoulder during the 4 Nations Face-Off, the dam had finally burst.
Don Sweeney and the Bruins finally waved the white flag at the trade deadline — ushering in a miserable final stretch that included a 10-game losing streak from March 13 to April 3.
Sweeney’s decision to rip the Band-Aid off with his early March fire sale might have put Boston in a position to land a top-five pick in the 2025 NHL Draft.
But the road traveled to secure that coveted draft capital was an arduous one for an overhauled locker room — and a fanbase that once hoped this team would be playing hockey into May.
“Having the season be over now is just something that is tough to process,” Geekie noted. “And you see teams that — we’ve competed with good teams all year, and to see it now pan out the way and just the consistency we didn’t have, it sucks.”
As ugly as this season was, there can be optimism drawn out of this recent stretch of misery.
Boston’s deadline deals added a haul of draft picks, as well as younger players like Fraser Minten. Over a month of consequence-free hockey allowed prospects like Minten, Fabian Lysell (three points in his final four games) and others to build some momentum before vying for more prominent roles in the fall.
A surging salary cap should benefit the Bruins moving forward — especially after already signing players like Pastrnak and McAvoy to long-term deals.
Boston currently has over $26 million in cap space this summer to add another scoring talent, while a top-five pick could land them a promising pivot for the future like Anton Frondell, James Hagens, or Caleb Desnoyers.
A bounce-back season from Swayman will be critical, while a clean bill of health for both McAvoy and Lindholm will be welcomed once camp opens in Brighton in September. And if this season is any indication, Pastrnak’s offensive talents will only continue to grow as more talent as added to this roster.
“I’m proud of the guys,” Sacco said. “I know there’s been a lot of moving parts this year, and they never quit — right to the end.”
After giving away their jerseys and saluting the fans remaining in their barn, a patchwork Bruins team made their way off the ice for the final time in 2024-25.
A busy offseason awaits. A very different roster will likely take to the frozen sheet on Causeway in just a few months.
Things can change in a hurry in the game of hockey.
Bruins fans don’t need to look very far to unearth such sentiment.
To comment, please create a screen name in your profile
To comment, please verify your email address
Conversation
This discussion has ended. Please join elsewhere on Boston.com