Few people would argue that the Boston Bruins' downfall in the 2025-26 season will be due to their offensive deficiencies. After David Pastrnak, there are plenty of questions about where the goals will come from, as the best chance they have is Morgan Geekie replicating last season's breakout. Even then, Geekie and Pastrnak alone aren't enough to get the team over the finish line.
When a team lacks offense, fans would like to see the front office give some of their young, high-upside players a chance to prove themselves. The Bruins won't be too much fun to watch this season, but monitoring the development of players like Matej Blumel, Matthew Poitras, Fabian Lysell, and Alex Steeves would've at least given us something to look forward to. Instead, the front office decided to send all four to Providence.
It left plenty of fans and experts scratching their heads over what the Bruins were thinking. They gave all these players, especially Blumel, as many chances as they could in the preseason. Instead of getting to see Blumel on the left flank of the second power-play unit, they now have Marat Khusnutdinov occupying that spot. No offense to the gritty forward, but that won't excite fans as much.
I have to give props to Cam Neely, Don Sweeney, and Charlie Jacobs for taking responsibility on Monday afternoon. They could've easily gone into the season without addressing the media. However, their answers were less than appealing, and I have even less hope for the future outlook after hearing what they had to say.
Neely's comments about the bottom-six were one of the worst parts, as it's concerning that the front office's takeaway from last season's failures is that the team needed to get tougher. It explains their offseason signing decisions and risks of putting Blumel and Steeves through waivers in favor of Jeffrey Viel, but it doesn't make them any easier to understand.
Neely on what the Bruins were looking for when adding new players:
— Bridgette Proulx (@bridgetteproulx) October 6, 2025
"We really felt the bottom part of our lineup needed a little bit more piss and vinegar, if you will. So that was something we attacked first." pic.twitter.com/iDK5iqZnPD
It seems like Neely wants to excite the fans this year with some more physical play. While physicality does get the Garden rocking, another thing that does is winning hockey games and playoff atmospheres. A mid-March Viel or Tanner Jeannot fight isn't going to hit the same when the Bruins are closer to the Gavin McKenna sweepstakes than winning a Stanley Cup.