5 players to watch as Bruins try to end slide vs. Penguins
Things are looking awfully bleak for the 2024-25 Bruins.
After months and months of noting that there was still time to turn things around, the year-long inconsistencies and struggles are no longer something that the club can run from. And for the Bruins, this weekend’s road back-to-back in Pittsburgh and Minnesota could either drive the final nail in the B’s coffin or keep them on life support in an East that refuses to separate, as the Bruins come into this weekend four points out of the final playoff spot in the conference.
Here’s 5 players to watch when the sides battle it out at PPG Paints Arena…
David Pastrnak
No shock here, I know. Bruins superstar David Pastrnak has taken his game to another level for over two full months now, and while it’s been great for Pastrnak’s numbers and actually given you targeted segments to focus on when watching this team (whenever No. 88 is on the ice), it’s also been a disastrous lowlight of the Bruins’ ineffectiveness without him. In fact, Pastrnak has been on the ice for the last eight Boston goals scored, and has not witnessed a goal from the B’s bench since Nikita Zadorov’s first-period goal against Vegas back on Feb. 8.
Pastrnak comes into play on a career-high 16-game point streak (14 goals and 31 points), and with 18 goals and 40 points in 28 career showdowns with the Penguins.
Georgii Merkulov
Recalled from Providence on Friday, Saturday will indeed come with Georgii Merkulov‘s first NHL appearance since Nov. 21 against Utah, according to an update from the Boston Globe’s Kevin Paul Dupont, who is live on the scene in Pittsburgh.
Merkulov has continued to produce at a near point-per-game pace in the minors, but is still looking to break through in the NHL. The 24-year-old Merkulov has one assist in three games for Boston this season. He can be a definite power-play weapon, though, and it’ll be interesting to see how the Bruins use him on the man advantage against a Pittsburgh penalty kill that has been the 9th-worst unit (73.6 percent) since Jan. 1 while also taking the 10th-most minors in hockey over that span.
Brad Marchand
Thursday night against the Islanders marked just the eighth time in Bruins captain Brad Marchand‘s 1,089-game career that he finished a game with at least seven shots on goal and zero goals, and it was the first time it’s happened to Marchand since Apr. 2022. In the seven games that’ve followed that kind of performance to this point, Marchand has certainly rebounded, with five goals and 12 points.
Marchand has also posted five goals and two assists in his last 10 head-to-heads with Pittsburgh, and comes into play with 22 career goals against the Penguins, making Pittsburgh the second-most tortured team at the hands of Marchand (he’s scored 27 career goals against Buffalo).
And not to be lost in all of this is the fact that the B’s are on death’s door and this weekend will almost certainly determine exactly how aggressively the Bruins may sell off ahead of the Mar. 7 deadline. Marchand, who has made it clear that he doesn’t want to be traded, can and should set the tone to compete and at least give you something to feel good about when it comes to the team’s morale.
Rickard Rakell
Unfortunately for the Bruins, this could be a collision course kind of head-to-head with Rickard Rakell. Sidney Crosby’s left winger, Rakell enters Saturday’s contest on a seven-game goalless skid, which is his second-longest of the season (he had a nine-game drought in November). But he also has excellent career numbers against Boston, with eight goals and 17 points in 20 career showdowns with the Bruins, and scored a goal in the only prior head-to-head between these teams in 2024-25.
Danton Heinen
Take 2 with the Penguins for Danton Heinen is off to a solid start, with Heinen on the board with one goal and four points through eight games with Pittsburgh. And it’s worth noting that all four of those points have come in Heinen’s last five games, putting him on a decent heater for a middle-six wing. Heinen is also skating on Pittsburgh’s second power-play grouping, which features Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang, two players who can always throw things back to the Wayback Machine every now and then.
