It's hard not to feel optimistic as the Boston Bruins head to the West Coast on Sunday afternoon. With star defenseman Charlie McAvoy serving a six-game suspension at the start of the season, the goal was to stay afloat until he returned. However, they did more than that, outscoring their opponents 11-2 over the past two games to go 4-2 in his absence.
The defense has been rock solid since he left the lineup, but unfortunately, one of them will have to come out. With Connor Clifton projected as the likely odd-man out for at least the first game, the attention turns to which blueliner will line up on McAvoy's left side on Tuesday evening against the San Jose Sharks.
After playing much of the 2025-26 season alongside Jonathan Aspirot, McAvoy will at least get an upgrade. Assuming Hampus Lindholm and Will Borgen are the pair who will stick, three obvious options to get the call alongside McAvoy.
NIkita Zadorov
McAvoy has some experience playing alongside Nikita Zadorov from last season, which could make it an easy transition in his first game back. It also makes sense not to mess up the other pairs if Clifton is the healthy scratch, as Lindholm-Borgen and Brunet-Lohrei have been so good together.
In 321 minutes together, the pair had a 46.4% xGF. In that metric, they were the 19th-best pair that Marco Sturm rolled out last season for more than 10 minutes, which doesn't exactly instill a ton of confidence but could be worthy of a fresh start just to see if anything has changed.
Frederic Brunet
Brunet looked like the chosen defenseman through training camp, as the coaching staff stapled him next to McAvoy and then kept him around to skate alongside him at practice while he was the healthy scratch. All signs pointed to Brunet getting his chance, with the Bruins deploying them as a pair when the star defenseman returned.
However, everything changed once Aspirot struggled through three games, and Brunet got the chance to enter the lineup alongside Mason Lohrei on the third pair. The team didn't realize how good the two under-25 defensemen would look together, which might've altered their plans for a Brunet-McAvoy first pair.
If they stick with the plan, it would make sense for Brunet to get the opportunity while Zadorov slides into a third-pair role with Lohrei. The only problem is that Zadorov-Lohrei ranked 27th out of 28 among Bruins defense pairs in xGF% last season.
Mason Lohrei
With the Bruins already having a sample size for Zadorov-McAvoy and Zadorov-Lohrei and receiving mixed results, they could reward Lohrei for his fine play by giving him another chance at top-pair minutes after a rough first try there last season. Fans may not remember those few games last October fondly when the Lohrei-McAvoy pairing struggled, but the 25-year-old looks different this season.
They also get the chance to find lightning in a bottle with a Zadorov-Brunet pairing, though I would prefer Lohrei to stay on the right side and let someone else play with McAvoy. For whatever reason, he has been better there.
Add us as a preferred source on Google