Who and what make up the Bruins’ untouchables ahead of 2025 trade deadline?
Bruins general manager Don Sweeney is open for business.
But most likely not in the fashion that’s most familiar to him (as a buyer), as the Bruins have entered deadline week on the outside looking in and with losses in all but three of their last 11 games.
The Bruins also continue to deal with injury woes — and two of their most recent injuries have involved players who could be on the move this deadline in pending UFAs Trent Frederic and Brad Marchand — in what just feels like a sign from the cosmos that this is not the Bruins’ year and that selling is the best and only option for Sweeney ahead of Friday’s trade deadline and in a market short on sellers.
“I think historically, we’ve been pretty aggressive. You know, when our team’s been in a position, [but] I think we’ll take a much more cautious approach as we approach the deadline,” Sweeney said back on Feb. 23, three losses ago for his club, when asked about his deadline approach this time around. “That being said if there are opportunities to improve our team now and certainly moving forward, whether that’s positional shifts or other teams are trying to identify that we may have a strength at, we will look at all opportunities to improve our team now, but more importantly, moving forward.
“It’s just stuff that happens during this period of time, and it may plant a seed for the draft and beyond, but there’ll be a lot of conversations with people asking what possible moves we can make. We’re just going to take a more cautious approach in terms of as being aggressive as we have been in the past.”
If you ask around, just about everybody is on the market for the Bruins this deadline season.
But here’s a look at players that the Bruins should deem untouchable in a deadline move…
David Pastrnak
This one’s easy. If you’re trading David Pastrnak, you’re crazy. Absolutely cuckoo bananas crazy.
Boston’s entire offense flows through Pastrnak, and he’s actually the only one that’s producing consistently for this team. Not only is Pastrnak the fourth-highest scorer in the league this season (and doing so on a team that ranks 28th in goals per game), but with 75 points on the year, he’s had a direct hand with either a goal or an assist on 45 percent of the Black and Gold’s total offense this campaign. In fact, in five full games back from the break, the Bruins have yet to score a goal against a goalie with Pastrnak on the bench, which is just absolutely insane to think about.
In a year full of negatives and disappointments, Pastrnak has been a positive and more than pulled his weight as the club’s top offensive threat. There’s truly not a trade that you can make right out outside of trading him for Nathan MacKinnon, Connor McDavid, or Leon Draisaitl that makes this team better or gives them more than what Pastrnak has given them this season.
Charlie McAvoy
If Pastrnak is your building block up front, Charlie McAvoy is your building block on the backend.
I understand that McAvoy is not your perfect No. 1 defenseman by 2024-25 standards — he’ll never put up the points of a Cale Makar or Roman Josi, and it’s probably why he’ll never win a Norris based on recent voting trends — but he’s still an excellent three-zone threat from the backend in today’s game. You saw a little bit of that in McAvoy’s 4 Nations Face-Off performance (he was utilized in a shutdown role opposite a puck-mover), as he delivered some punishing hits still while trying to push pace the other way and provide offensive support when possible. On a blue line of relative unknowns, McAvoy is the closest thing the Bruins have to a certainty, and that’s something the B’s can’t afford to lose.
Hampus Lindholm
It’s unlikely that we’re going to see Hampus Lindholm back in action this season. That’s not speculation, that’s from the Bruins themselves. Out of action with a knee injury since early November, Lindholm’s trade value is at its absolute worst right now, and that alone is a reason why the Bruins should not (and will not) consider moving him at this year’s deadline. But assuming that Lindholm returns next season at 100 percent, is this a player that the Bruins even should consider moving right now? With the cap exploding this year and for the foreseeable future, we may be about to see a whole bunch of lesser defensemen make something similar to Lindholm and his $6.5 million salary.
Just something to consider.
Mason Lohrei
I honestly do not want to consider Mason Lohrei a pure untouchable right now. For me, he’s a conditional one moving forward, but a certain one right now. Point blank, there’s no real reason for the Black and Gold to move Lohrei right now. Let’s start with the obvious: The Bruins are currently without both Lindholm and McAvoy, giving the 24-year-old Lohrei oodles and oodles of minutes to grow on the fly. He’s handling more responsibility, and is currently running Boston’s top power-play unit. The latter is where he’s going to do the bulk of his damage, but getting some straight-up unprotected minutes is also beneficial in the sense that it gives you a greater picture of his potential ceiling.
But the other reason is because we simply don’t know what Lindholm will look like upon his return. If he can’t move the same as he did prior to the knee injury, Lohrei will be the face of Boston’s left-side backend attack, especially with both Lindholm and Nikita Zadorov locked into long-term deals here.
Jeremy Swayman
I’m sure you’re annoyed by this. But if the Bruins decide to bail on Jeremy Swayman just one year into his eight-year contract, then truly what is the point of anything? This is not to tell you that Swayman has been electric this season. I’m aware that his .898 save percentage ranks 25th among 31 goalies with at least 30 games played, and same for his 2.95 goals against average. Swayman, like pretty much every player on this team, has some pockets of strong play but has also had some absolute clunkers.
But, it’s simply too early to make that call. Especially when we’re making the call with Swayman playing behind a team with such obvious, glaring holes by 2025 standards, and in a year that was by all means derailed from the jump by Swayman missing his first training camp as a full-time starter. (That’s something that I think he’d go back and have a redo on, if we’re being honest.)
And think about this, what’s the Bruins’ track record of bailing on young players at the first sign of disappointment? You could argue they never replaced Tyler Seguin after trading him in 2013 and that they’re still looking for someone to give them similar to what Reilly Smith did as a top-six right wing. The Bruins would be in an even similar boat had they not lucked into McAvoy a year after Dougie Hamilton decided he didn’t want to be here anymore and demanded a trade.
If next year is more of the same from Swayman, then the conversation obviously changes. But abandoning him now with everything that’s gone wrong this season (both by Swayman directly and indirectly by the team in front of him), and with his value at its absolute lowest and when you’ve seen how he performed in the 2024 postseason just has all the makings of a massive mistake for this club.
2025 first-round pick
If this team’s current trend continues, the Bruins might F.A. and F.O. their way into a top-10 pick in the 2025 NHL Draft. No draft is perfect, but man, it’s hard to envision the Pastrnak-McAvoy-Swayman Bruins getting that kind of pick on a regular basis. And most importantly, it would allow the Bruins an absolutely fantastic chance to draft that franchise center that the organization desperately needs. And when push comes to shove, this is more often than not the only real way to acquire that kind of talent. The 2025 NHL Draft has about seven centers projected to go somewhere in the top 11 or 12 picks.
Any future second-round pick
Similar to my thoughts on trading first-round picks, these second-round picks gotta stay here. It feels like too often the Bruins have thrown second-round picks away in search of quick fixes and help. In fact, since Sweeney took over in 2015, the Bruins have traded six second-round picks for a combination of Lee Stempniak, Marcus Johansson, Taylor Hall, Hampus Lindholm, Garnet Hathaway, and Dmitry Orlov. And barring the Bruins acquiring a second-round pick, this will be the third straight year that the Bruins watch the second round as a spectator, having moved their 2025 second in the Orlov-Hathaway trade.
It goes without saying, I know, but that adds up.
Going beyond the fact that the Bruins’ most recent successes have both come in the second round (Matt Poitras in 2022 and Mason Lohrei in 2020), second-round picks can also provide a club with franchise cornerstones if you hit on the pick. I always come back to the Stars with this mantra; Dallas drafted Roope Hintz, Jason Robertson, and Logan Stankoven with second-round picks. Teams like Carolina got both Sebastian Aho and Pyotr Kochetkov with second-round picks. And even if you’re not getting a franchise player like the Lightning nabbed with Nikita Kucherov, you can also grab notable high-end complementary pieces with second-round picks like the Maple Leafs did with Matthew Knies.
