The Bruins struck gold with two big moves that changed their outlook (and season)

At least for now.

At this point in the 2025-26 NHL season it is starting to become clear which teams are good and which teams are not. There are still some exceptions to that, and there are a handful of teams that are still in that “what the hell is this team?” range.

The Boston Bruins are one of those teams.

They had a miserable 2024-25 season, missed the playoffs, and went through another coaching change. Injuries to Charlie McAvoy and Hampus Lindholm certainly disrupted things, and Jeremy Swayman’s awful year in net was a game-changer for all of the wrong reasons.

Overall they just seemed to hit a plateau under the leadership of Cam Neely and Don Sweeney. Maybe they still have.

Entering play on Saturday they are actually in a pretty solid spot in the standings. They are eight points ahead of the Florida Panthers for the second wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference (though Florida does have two games in hand) and on a 99.8 point pace for the season.

Positive signs for them.

It is still a little difficult to figure out.

From a puck possession and scoring chance perspective, they have some truly ugly numbers. They rank 19th in shot attempt share, 29th in expected goals share, 20th in scoring chance share and 29th in high-danger scoring chance share. They do not have the puck a lot. They get out-shot a lot. They get out-chanced a lot. That is typically not a great recipe for success.

They still lack a true No. 1 center, they do not have a good penalty kill and while their goaltending has been slightly above the league average in all situations, it is not anything that is a major season-changer to make up for all of the poor possession numbers across the board.

What they do have is a couple of high level players (David Pastrnak and McAvoy specifically), an excellent power play and they struck absolute gold on two recent roster moves that have significantly changed things for this season. Perhaps beyond.

Let’s talk about it.