Joe Haggerty

It’s a pretty safe bet that the Boston Bruins are not going to go through another season without a captain.After the just concluded campaign where Charlie McAvoy and David Pastrnak were essentially co-captains under first year head coach Marco Sturm, Cam Neely indicated earlier this week that discussions are already underway for the Bruins to name one player the 28th captain in franchise history for next season and beyond.“I think obviously we would love to name a captain, but we've had some great captains here, so one of the things that we want to do is make sure we're picking the right guy, and Marco is going to be a big part of that,” said Neely. “So having a new coach come in and implementing a new system, getting to know the players, I think it only made sense to see how the season played out, and then we're going to have plenty.

In a clear admission that Elias Lindholm has not quite turned into the player they thought he would be after landing him in free agency, the Bruins didn’t hide their post-playoff analysis that they currently lack a frontline, legitimate No. 1 center on their roster.At least they lack a No. 1 center in the way that Patrice Bergeron filled that role for the better part of two decades.Or even in the way that for one excellent season Charlie Coyle stepped up into the void to temporarily replace Bergeron in some important ways before consistently keeping up with that excellence caught up to him. Coyle was obviously not able to maintain that level of play prior to getting traded away from the Black and Gold in the great B’s fire sale of 2025, and since then the Bruins have operated without a proper setup man down the middle for David Pastrnak.It’s the reason they rushed a teen-aged Matt Poitras into a top 6 center role a couple of years ago and settled into a “No. 1 center by committee” approach this season that saw Lindholm, Fraser Minten and even Pavel Zacha get shifts there when things got desperate in the postseason.

Haggs is here to answer all the burning questions about the Boston Bruins offseason, potential departures from the B's front office to the Vancouver Canucks and Charlie McAvoy's slashing suspension to start next season while the Stanley Cup playoffs are still going on at a fever pitch.

While the Bruins haven’t played an actual game in weeks, the action hasn’t stopped for the franchise even as the Stanley Cup playoffs still play out for a handful of deep, talented teams that the B’s are aspiring to be in the next few years.It appeared that assistant general manager Evan Gold was poised to leave the Bruins for the open GM spot with the Vancouver Canucks and even spent a day with Canucks wonder twins Daniel and Henrik Sedin prior to them taking the roles of co-presidents of hockey operations in Vancouver. There were numerous reports that Bruins assistant GM Jamie Langenbrunner and analytics head Jeremy Rogalski were both going to leave with Gold to support him in Vancouver, which would have led a sizeable void in the Black and Gold’s management group.

Haggs is here for all of your pressing questions about the conference finals as they get going with the NHL's final four teams, the performance of B's players currently playing for their countries at the world championships in Switzerland and about the Bruins offseason as it slowly begins to take shape.

The IIHF World Championships are often looked at as a lesser international tournament that doesn’t rise anywhere close to the same quality and prestige of the Winter Olympic tourneys when it comes to the sport of hockey, or even to events like the World Cup and highly entertaining 4 Nations Faceoff that the NHL has concocted over the years.It’s looked at more as the tournament for NHL players not in the Stanley Cup playoffs, young up-and-coming prospects and for guys that tread the line between AHL star players and established NHL roster guys.But it can still be an extremely useful experience for the players involved and ultimately provides a proving and development ground for young players still looking to cement their reputations at the highest levels of hockey.And even this season the World Championships have players like Sidney Crosby, Mack Celebrini, Aleksander Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk suiting up for their countries, so it’s a high level of hockey.

Mason Lohrei is the kind of young player that can be incredibly challenging from a development perspective.The 25-year-old has oodles of offensive skill and has been one of the most productive D-men for the Bruins in back-to-back seasons while finishing with seven goals and 26 points in 73 games this season while drastically improving his plus/minus from a grotesque minus-43 two years ago to a plus-17 this past season while largely playing his “off side” on the right as a left-shot defenseman.And the young D-man is obviously well regarded enough that he’s on Team USA’s radar for the World Championships in each of the last two seasons and has been a top 4 guy throughout the international tournament. Lohrei doesn’t have any points to this point in the tourney, but he’s been a steady blueliner for an American group that’s featured fellow B’s players James Hagens and Alex Steeves as well as old friend Connor Clifton.

Haggs is here to answer all of your questions about the Bruins offseason, the conference championships in the Stanley Cup playoffs and how B's players are faring at the IIHF World Championships in Switzerland.

The Boston Bruins basked in a lot of victories, both moral and literal, during this past season when they pushed to 100 points during the regular season and then made it back to the Stanley Cup playoffs after a painful hiatus during the previous season. But the 2024-25 dumpster fire of a hockey campaign and the obvious talent gap that the Black and Gold faced this past season can be traced back to a period of fallow drafts from 2018-2021 that featured first round busts, few NHL players produced and a handful of draft picks that never even signed with the organization.

Alex Steeves was a bit of a forgotten man with the Boston Bruins in the second half of Boston’s regular season.