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David Pastrnak dealing with tendinitis and other takeaways from 1st day of Bruins training camp
"We as a group just said load management at this point in time is what's the best course of action."
The Boston Bruins officially opened their 2025 training camp on Wednesday, with the team taking part in off-ice testing for most of the morning and afternoon.
Marco Sturm won’t conduct Boston’s first practice at Warrior Ice Arena until Thursday morning, but Boston’s new head coach and Don Sweeney also touched on several topics in their first meeting with the media in Brighton.
Here are four takeaways from the first day of Boston’s camp:
Pastrnak dealing with tendinitis
When Sturm conducts Boston’s first practice on Thursday, there’s only expected to be one absence on the ice. Unfortunately for the Bruins, it’s Boston’s top player in David Pastrnak.
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“David Pastrnak won’t skate the first couple days,” Sweeney said. “His last training block, he got a little tendinitis. We as a group just said load management at this point in time is what’s the best course of action. He’s on the ice still, but he’ll be full practice early next week. So, that’s the only surprise we have. Everybody else is fully up and running.”
Even if Pastrnak is expected to be back on the ice next week, it stands as an inauspicious start for a Bruins roster that will have to rely heavily on Pastrnak when it comes to assured offensive production.
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The Bruins felt the sting of the injury bug last fall when Elias Lindholm missed most of camp with a back ailment — which put him behind the eight-ball during an underwhelming debut campaign with Boston.
Pastrnak’s health will be worth monitoring this fall — a departure from his usual durability on the ice. Pastrnak has not missed a game since the 2021-22 season, playing all 82 games over each of the last three campaigns.
No shortage of motivation
Marco Sturm was out coaching on the West Coast last winter when a promising Bruins season went off the rails in record time.
But, even as a newcomer to a Bruins team looking to atone from last year’s misery, Sturm acknowledged that his roster is not lacking motivation entering this clean slate.
“What I’m hearing from the guys is that they wanna play,” Sturm said. “I can feel they’re a little pissed off from last year. … The good sign is they’re all ready to go, they’re all excited and they all wanna play.”
The Bruins have a lot of questions that need to be answered regarding their reworked roster if this team has any shot of playing meaningful hockey this spring.
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But for now, the 47-year-old Sturm isn’t looking too far ahead when it comes to Boston’s goals for the upcoming season.
“I’m not a guy who’s looking at the playoff picture right now. Absolutely not,” Sturm said. “Why should I? We’re not even close yet. Nobody is close yet. So I’m not going to waste my time.
“I’m going to [spend] my time [looking at] tomorrow, the next few weeks, how things are going to shape up, and now, of course, I’m looking forward to game one. So I’m not a big picture guy.”
Even as Sturm takes a more gradual approach in his efforts to build Boston back up as a competitive club, Sweeney stressed that the Bruins have a template in place that can lead to success in 2025-26 — one that involve multiple players pulling on the rope.
“I believe in our players, because I think the way we’re constituted — we’re going to be a very competitive team,” Sweeney said. “Now, as I said before, not hiding from the fact that we’re going to have to produce by committee. And our power play has to come back online. … But we have to go out and execute that.
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“You have to defend at a better level, which we’ve typically done organizationally. Our goaltending needs to be in a better place, so we have to go out and earn that, but we’re not going to lose the belief in what we think we’re capable of accomplishing.”
No last-minute additions to camp roster
The Bruins are no stranger to doling out professional tryout (PTO) contracts ahead of training camp, opting to roll the dice on unsigned players and giving them every opportunity to crack the roster out of preseason action.
While last year’s PTO candidate in Tyler Johnson didn’t pan out with Boston (zero goals, two assists in nine games), the Bruins did strike gold in 2023-24 with Danton Heinen, who scored 17 goals and 36 points for Boston off a one-year, $775,000 contract.
But with Boston’s camp roster also dealing with a logjam of forwards — especially younger players primed for an opportunity in the NHL ranks — Sweeney acknowledged on Wednesday that the team didn’t plan on doling out PTOs before camp begins.
“We had a lot of discussions. We decided we’re not going to bring anybody in at this time,” Sweeney said. “That’s a little bit of our determination of players we really want to see in some situations.
“In the past, we’ve had some players come in in training camp and given them a really good opportunity to make our team and players have. This year we decided, as we’re going through the process, that we were going to stay committed [to evaluating those players].”
Giving prospects every opportunity
The Bruins’ future is bolstered with addition of James Hagens to Boston’s prospect pipeline — as well as a restocked cupboard of draft capital following the team’s trade-deadline sell-off in March.
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But, one of the priorities for Boston this season should revolve around identifying which prospects already in the system can develop into lineup stalwarts, both for this year and especially in the seasons ahead.
Fraser Minten and Matt Poitras will be vying for starting roles at the center position, while Dans Locmelis is also a potential dark-horse candidate to accelerate his developmental timeline with a strong camp.
On the wing, a Bruins roster short on high-end skating and skill would also welcome youngsters like Fabian Lysell and Matej Blumel carving out spots in the team’s middle-six grouping.
Given Sturm’s previous post as head coach of the Kings’ AHL affiliate, the Bruins coach said he has no qualms with giving unproven players an extended runway to fight for NHL reps during camp.
“I worked with all the young kids the last three years, so I want them to have success, and I’m going to do everything I can to put them in a good spot, and I want them to push some other guys — and maybe some older veterans, too.
“So that’s the process. And hopefully — usually there’s always one surprise in training camp. The last seven years I’ve been coaching at the NHL level, it usually was always one surprise, and hopefully we’re going to have at least one or two coming out the next couple weeks.”
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