Zacha, Geekie offer Mittelstadt a model of better days ahead

Assuming the shirts come off the Boston Bruins’ backs on the final night of the season against the New Jersey Devils on Tuesday, April 15, at TD Garden, an annual postgame ceremony will be bittersweet for 20-something lucky fans in attendance.

It’s always more fun for the fans and the players when this ritual is a gateway to a postseason run at the Stanley Cup.

The Devils, along with 15 other National Hockey League teams, will have more hockey to play in the third week of April as the playoffs begin without the Bruins (30-33-9) for the first time in nine years.

Of more significance, this is the first time in 18 years since Bruins fans have endured garbage time, that deflating, month-long landing pattern engaged after it has become abundantly clear that, while the players on the ice and the coaches on the bench are still trying (usually in vain) to win hockey games, the decision makers are managing for next year.

Fresh off spoiled-rotten childhoods, younger generations of Red Sox and Patriots fans have been learning about this phenomenon of garbage time. Now a younger generation of Bruins fans are hereby introduced.

The good news is tickets will become more affordable for the rest of the season, the caveat being the April 1 Washington game that could become a hot item pending Alex Ovechkin’s pursuit of Wayne Gretzky’s all-time, NHL (regular-season) goal-scoring record.

Does anyone know why playoff totals are not considered in these career milestones? In order to really catch The Great One, The Great 8 would need another 50 goals on top of the six he needs to match 99’s regular-season career total.

Heading into Tuesday night’s game at Winnipeg:

Ovechkin: 888 regular-season goals plus 72 playoff goals = 960 total.

Gretzky: 894 regular-season goals plus 122 playoff goals = 1,016 total.

The real difference: 56 goals.

If Ovie can get there, more power to him and, as it is, all respect.

I digress … back to the Bruins.

Conventional wisdom, dictating that the worse it gets in the standings, the better it gets for the future via a better draft position, is being eclipsed in the moment by signs of strife from within and without the organization. Feel-good moments of NHL firsts for prospects and encouraging surges in play by incumbent Bruins typically common to garbage time have been slow to emerge. Instead, we get the following:

A text from my dozen-plus, smart-phone fellowship noted that the Bruins were getting “beat up” this afternoon on 98.5, the team’s radio flagship station. “Kick ’em when they’re up, kick ’em when they’re down,” sang Don Henley. Mojo Nixon’s posthumous objections notwithstanding, the chorus will stop when the talkers turn their lonely eyes to the Red Sox, who will become the object of their angst later this week, as in the very minute that the baseball Rangers get a runner in scoring position.

I hear kicking is good for ratings. What is good, though, for the Bruins?

Nikita Zadorov’s answer to a postgame question in Los Angeles about Jeremy Swayman’s attempt to take on Darcy Kuemper after the Kings goalie roughed up Marat Khusnutdinov sent the sports-radio crows circling around Boston’s 1924 hockey team, lusty for dirty laundry and any evidence of carnage that might undermine the sport’s long-standing tradition of all for one and one for all.

Hell, even accomplished authors have taken shots at the Bruins (see Stan Fischler’s “Bobby Orr and The Big, Bad Bruins” and especially Stephen Brunt’s otherwise-intriguing if unauthorized and relatively recent biography “Searching for Bobby Orr”).

As for the radio pundits, oh, to pull back the curtain and expose the Wizard of Oz as a fumbling, bumbling fool. Oh, how the three-sport media would gloat at the demise of hockey’s myth of harmony, juxtaposing the sport alongside their daily roster of rumors, selfish chest-beating and scandal. Ah-HA! Hockey is not a special breed. Screw your Stanley Cup and the silly playoff handshake that it rode in on.

It’s slightly entertaining to witness the giddy excitement at the notion that the Boston Bruins might be, to the core, a divided room with feuds, a complete mess. You want to know when tabloid journalism has decided that there’s nothing to see here? When they go back to not talking about the Bruins for several months at a time.

I digress.

So, minus all that noise, a quick glance at what happened in L.A.

While unpredictable on the ice, the affable Zadorov has engaged the media all season long with a refreshing openness and sense of humor. Last night, however, he questioned a reporter’s altruistic interpretation of Swayman’s run at Kuemper (which was mutually accepted but prevented by the on-ice officials). It was suggested that Swayman was “sticking up for his teammate.” “Is that what that was? I don’t know, no comment,” deadpanned the defenseman.

Don’t count on Behind the B sorting this one out for you, but realize it’s also not a big deal, especially as the 2024-25 season sinks into the W-L-OTL abyss.

Any decisions the Bruins make about players this offseason will be made with the big picture in mind, and any in-house squabbles will actually be considered welcome by management, which seeks a pulse in this tired team.

Count Rink Rap among those who feel that, given a do-over (i.e. without Swayman’s holdout, Brad Marchand’s three summer surgeries, Hampus Lindholm’s fractured kneecap, and with even an average start by several returning players who happened to be way off their form when the puck dropped in October), the resultant hockey would prove that Bruins management was not off its collective rocker to think that 2024’s offseason maneuvering should have taken them another step closer to the Cup.

There are always doubts, as the games have to be played.

From a theoretical perspective, given the Bruins’ 2023-24 performance, adding a sturdy, two-way, natural center and an intimidating left shot to the back end, it made sense here that the Bruins would become better, not worse. Especially the Elias Lindholm part. Last year, they were in the Presidents Trophy and Atlantic Division conversations until very late in the regular season. Then they won a playoff series, falling in the second round to the eventual Cup champion.

As it turned out, Elias Lindholm has seen too much change, moving from Calgary to Vancouver and to Boston in such a short time. He will be a better player in 2025-26.

Without Swayman’s contract dispute, his resultant holdout and missed training camp, would the end of the goalie-hug era by itself have deprived the Bruins of the elite puck-stopping that had elevated a very good 2022-23 team to the record-setting group it became or, of perhaps greater relevance, last season’s overachievers? By the way, Joonas Korpisalo has been pretty decent in his role.

Believing in himself, Swayman drove a hard bargain for the reins and the contract that goes with them, and for the first season of his young career he has underperformed. He has had many Tuukka Rask-type nights where the scoreboard did not reflect his work due to his team’s inability to score. He got no credit for those many performances. Atop those were too many other nights when it all fell apart and he fit neatly into the picture of all that went wrong.

By and large, the 2024-25 version of Swayman has rarely been able to save the Bruins from themselves. In the prior two seasons, he and partner Linus Ullmark told many a lie about the Bruins, lies they could not perpetuate in the playoffs. This year the goaltending has been human, average, sometimes very good, often just good as in not the reason they lost. But it’s also been sometimes bad, especially on the road.

Who’s fault is that? (I’ve been asked repeatedly.) Fine, but the Bruins’ problems don’t get solved by settling on a target for fingers feeling the need to point. What matters now is what measures will be taken to avoid repeating the mistakes of 2024 that sent this season spiraling out of orbit.

Some decisions have already changed the identity of the franchise and unseated some very familiar faces.

Management took the drastic step of trading mainstay players with term remaining on their contracts (i.e. Brandon Carlo to Toronto and Charlie Coyle to Colorado) because they believed that the (seller’s) market presented them an opportunity to make major changes, gain critical draft and prospect capital and, at the same time, position the Bruins to reload and compete in 2025-26.

Will they really have their cake and eat it, too? Or, to put it another way, will NHL free agents continue to treat Boston as a destination?

Two leadoff questions regarding the last piece of the plan: Will General Manager Don Sweeney (in whom Bruins CEO Charlie Jacobs and team president Cam Neely trust) be able to convince Henri Jokiharju (i.e. the best thing that’s happened to Zadorov since his July 1 arrival) from going to the open market this summer (the 26-year-old right-shot defenseman is UFA); and can Casey Mittelstadt elevate his game in Boston the way Morgan Geekie and Pavel Zacha have theirs?

These are the two most critical personnel questions affecting the 2025-26 Bruins.

A Jokiharju extension would mitigate the loss of Carlo and provide a calm approach that has beautifully complemented Zadorov’s more explosive and volatile game. Jokiharju was drafted late in the first round and is entering the sweetspot of his career.

In the case of Mittelstadt, the Bruins are looking for creativity from forwards not named David Pastrnak. Mittelstadt doesn’t skate as powerfully as Coyle, nor is he anywhere near as physical a forechecker or backchecker. But he has great hands and sees the ice on an entirely different level. Can the Bruins tap into that and get the center to realize his potential?

“I was brought here for those reasons, so they can play me on wing and center,” confirmed Zacha after a 6-3 win over the Rangers on Feb. 1. “Me, personally, I feel a little bit better on center, I think. I pride myself on the two-way game and playing a little more defensively, so that’s something that if, my game’s not where I need it to be, I can focus on faceoffs and playing defensively and then start going a little bit, so I think it helps me especially in those games that you’re not feeling your best. But, you see it differently if you get the pucks in the middle more than chipping out pucks and you have to forecheck, I enjoy that part of the game.”

It’s been fun watching Zacha emerge as the steadiest of Boston forwards, especially considering he was acquired as a forward with a great amount of raw talent but little in the way of consistency.

Identifying other teams’ plateaued players, especially young players, acquiring them and coaching them up into the next phase of their careers is what Sweeney has done best in his decade as Bruins GM. In addition to the success stories of Geekie and Zacha, he had already accomplished the same thing with Coyle and with defenseman Hampus Lindholm.

In the case of Zacha, Sweeney had signed journeyman center Eric Haula as a 30-year-old free agent in 2021 and, after one season, traded him to New Jersey for Zacha, the Devils’ sixth-overall regret in the infamous 2015 NHL Draft. The rangy Czech center was given the opportunity in 2022-23 to play on David Krejci’s left wing and spend many bench minutes watching Patrice Bergeron’s shifts.

Between the eight-month internship on the ice with Krejci and the in-between class time studying Bergeron from the bench, Bruins management theorized that Zacha’s second-effort ethic and excellent skating ability might allow them to realize his potential in a Boston uniform.

Without the two linchpin centermen whose solid, three-zone play poured the foundation for the Bruins’ 2011 Stanley Cup run, close calls in 2013 and ’19 and the amazing 2022-23 season, management asked for more from Coyle in 2023-24 and got it. The Bruins also asked Zacha to pivot to center and broke in rookie Matt Poitras on the third line.

By the end of the 2023-24 season, Poitras had been sidelined with a shoulder surgery, Zacha hit the wall and was moved to third line, then back into the top six but on the wing, and Coyle kept carrying the mantle. Geekie filled the hole left at center, showing his versatility during second-round, match-up situations against Sam Bennett and Sasha Barkov. He didn’t win that series, but Geekie played so admirably in a tough situation against future champions that it became hard to fathom that Geekie had gone without a qualifying offer in Seattle, rendering him an unrestricted free agent available to the Bruins.

When the current season started off drenched by the perfect storm of everything that could go wrong plus other stuff, lame-duck coach Jim Montgomery needed to solidify the middle and decided to pivot Zacha back to center. Zacha was his only forward playing well at the time. The maneuver leveraged Poitras to Providence (AHL), and the assignment was the best thing for the second-year pro who had missed too much time (due to his shoulder injury) to find his NHL game amidst trying circumstances.

Perhaps the more-recent decision to send Poitras to the AHL at the trade deadline is also based on putting the second-year pro in a position to develop while playing meaningful hockey in multiple roles for a team headed toward the Calder Cup playoffs (i.e. something to play for). If we don’t see Fraser Minten in Boston before the season ends, it will be the same reason for keeping him in the AHL, where the vibe is good and the hockey important from a team perspective.

For now, it’s the grinders and Fabian Lysell playing out the NHL string. When time runs out on the NHL season, they will return to load up Providence for the AHL postseason.

Next stop, at Anaheim on Wednesday night.

Did I mention the Montreal Canadiens (who rarely if ever play the Bruins anymore) are in a playoff spot? Not that the Habs are anywhere near close to Cup contention, but to the many Boston fans who have recently expressed how much they miss the good ol’ days when Montreal was a formidable rival, here’s to irony. The Canadiens might actually get in, right when the Bruins are on their way out.

I’m getting hit with questions lately as to who will coach the Bruins next season. The short answer, if he becomes available, is Penguins coach Mike Sullivan. If Sullivan stays on the job in Pittsburgh, the Bruins will have a tougher time deciding whether to hire from outside the organization or to promote from within. The gut feeling here is Assistant Coach Jay Leach (whom the Bruins had been grooming before he left Providence to assist on the Seattle bench) is ready. And, if so, a Ryan Mougenel promotion to NHL assistant is anticipated.

What then for Joe Sacco? A return as head coach (minus the interim tag) is difficult to imagine, just due to his juxtaposition to everything that continues to befall this team, especially late-period and late-game collapses.

Whether Sacco stays in the organization via a return to his prior title of associate head coach is another question. He certainly has the capacity to change roles and move on with what’s best for the team. In taking on the interim-coach job without the benefit of additional resources, Sacco has already proven this.

Once he settled the room following Jim Montgomery’s dismissal, simplified their game and gotten a sounder brand of hockey from the Bruins, the addition of a second-line winger who could score would have changed enough one-goal losses into wins that such an acquisition would likely have changed the season trajectory. No such acquisition was made, and once scoring woes re-emerged, the Bruins pressed and sprung leaks new and old.

As reality has set in and the Bruins continue to slip in the standings, off the bubble and out of the playoff picture, Sacco has had to try and tap into whatever might motivate any individual player for whatever reason. At this point, it’s a thankless task that will not add to his resume.

At the same time, it’s hard to imagine Sacco not staying in the picture. His insights after games as well as his impressions of players are impressive. After earning an early-career, head-coaching job with Colorado similar to the pre-lockout opportunities Sullivan got with the Bruins and Bruce Cassidy got in Washington, Sacco joined the Claude Julien’s staff in Boston and has been a constant presence, not unlike that of goalie coach Bob Essensa. By contrast, Sullivan and Cassidy eventually went back to the minors to rebuild their career cache, and both have since won the Cup as head coaches.

It would be understandable if the Bruins cleaned house on the bench and let an outside coach bring in his own assistants, but Boston’s next head coach will necessarily embrace a synergy with management rather than operating on an island. That probably means the new coach would embrace management’s loyalty to certain members of the present coaching staff.

Given what Sacco has had to deal with for another head-coaching opportunity, he’s certainly earned consideration.

Two things to watch for: Dominic Tiano’s Bruins podcast on NCAA free agents and Mark Divver’s latest weekly update on the surging Providence Bruins.

Finally, it will be fun watching former Bruins in the upcoming Stanley Cup playoffs, but for the time being I’m contented taking these next three weeks to learn Mittelstadt’s game and form some ideas as to what Sweeney was looking at with the decision to bring in a former eighth-overall (2017) pick who will start next season at age 26 and has two more years at $5.75 million. Without the usual importance/distraction of the scoreboard, the last 10 games of the season offer garbage-time teams the opportunity to focus on and figure out a player. For the rest of this season, that player is Mittelstadt.