There are rumors and speculation surrounding the Boston Bruins organization to kick off the summer, including how they will handle the soon-expiring contracts of forwards Casey Middlestadt and Pavel Zacha, ongoing negotiations with Viktor Arvidsson and Andrew Peeke, and the everlasting Mason Lohrei trade rumors.
The team is looking to upgrade their forward group and their defensive depth, but the free agent market is not as deep or talented as years past, and Boston is not quite the top-five destination for players that it used to be. GM Don Sweeney’s hands are somewhat tied in navigating the trade market if he is truly bent on improving his team.
Zacha has been at the center of every major Bruins trade rumor up to this point in the offseason, and is viewed as the Bruins’ most appealing main roster trade asset. However, there have been conflicting rumors that the Bruins are prioritizing signing Zacha to an extension. This makes sense with Zacha coming off a career-high season, scoring 30 goals and 65 points in 78 games, and centering the most productive line on the team.
Aside from Zacha and Lohrei, Boston does have a main roster asset that could garner a much larger return. A player no one is talking about, one Sweeney not-so subtly hinted at a few months ago.
Morgan Geekie's season in review
Last June 29, the Bruins signed Morgan Geekie to a six-year contract extension after a breakout season, scoring 33 goals and 57 points. Heading into the 2025-26 season, there were high hopes for the Geekie-Lindholm-Pastrnak top line that finished off 2024-25 on a strong note. While that top line did not meet expectations as a whole this past season, Geekie continued his own hot streak, spending time among the league’s top goal-scorer ranks in the first half of the season. He finished this season with 39 goals and 68 points, topping his career highs from last season. After the early months of the season, though, Geekie was a bit streaky, and his faults began to show.
From December 21 to January 17, Geekie went goalless for 12 games. A couple of months later, Geekie went even longer without one. In 17 games, from March 7 to April 5, he didn’t record a goal. When Geekie is not scoring, it is easy to see the deficiencies in his game. He is not the fastest skater, he is not great at setting up plays, he has a hard time possessing and skating with the puck, and he is a defensive liability. If he were consistently scoring goals, these problems would not be as accentuated. Geekie is a great goal scorer when he is playing with the right players, but doesn’t seem capable to pivot his play when the situation calls for it.
Don Sweeney's comment and speculation
In his post-trade deadline press conference in March, Sweeney made an interesting comment about Geekie. Halfway through the press conference he was asked how Geekie and David Pastrnak might respond to not landing a big addition at the deadline, to which Sweeney threw his hands up and said, “I mean, I could go to Geeks and say two teams asked for you and you could have been playing somewhere else if that’s the honest answer he’d like to hear.”
It is really not that far-fetched an idea. Geekie could fit even better on a more talented team where he doesn’t have to rely on Pastrnak to set him up, and the Bruins could get a somewhat significant return for him. Geekie has a completely digestible contract for a player of his caliber ($5.5million/AAV) and just turned 27 years old. He is one of the Bruins’ most valuable main roster assets outside of Pastrnak, Charlie McAvoy, and Jeremy Swayman.
If the Bruins center the right package around Geekie, they might be able to grab a player like Jason Robertson of the Dallas Stars. The Stars and Robertson are reportedly at a standstill in contract negotiations, the Stars do not have the salary cap space to meet what Robertson wants, the Bruins do, while Geekie has a small cap hit that the Stars can take on in exchange.
Geekie is not an asset to trade for little value. He also has a full no-trade clause that kicks in on July 1, so if Sweeney does have any plans to move him, he only has a little over a week left to do it without having to get Geekie’s approval.
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