Bob DeChiara-Imagn Images
After one day of Free Agency, the Bruins went out and spent a lot of money...but not in ways fans really wanted them to.
Well, it’s one day down, and everyone’s big mad as they usually are.
Free Agency right now is awkward. All the guys we were so excited to see test the market decided to sign back up with their old teams instead, and as a result, the remaining bones to pick through are largely pretty grim choices or a bunch of quietly decent picks that may not move the needle, but at least be useful as depth.
The
Boston Bruins...didn’t acquit themselves well to day one of Free Agency. At least in the minds of fans. Let’s go over it all.
Victor Arvidsson - Hoping for that Bruins Bounce again
Arvidsson is an interesting choice. He struggled quite a bit in LA and Edmonton to take the things he does do very well (shoot the puck) to translate into goals. He’s not even that bad on the defensive side of things; especially if he can be given some help in that regard from his teammates, but he’s gotta start turning the offense he does generate into goals if he wants to win over fans who are desperate to see a spark on the offensive side of the puck.
This is an interesting bet; primarily when it comes to a phenomenon that took a hard year off for the Bruins; that playing for the team seemed to just reinvigorate some players into being stronger all around; not just defensively but offensively as well. Given that he’ll likely be asked to play slightly less than that? There’s a chance he could in fact find a way to turn his shoot-happy nature into a renaissance.
Michael Eyssimont - Solid Value!
I know that people didn’t quite care for his low point totals, but if there’s anyone who can absolutely live up to playing for the Boston Bruins by doing a lot of the little things right? It’s Mikey.
Eyssimont may be a bottom six forward, but he is one hell of a bottom six forward.
The biggest issue Eyssimont keeps running into is that his offensive skillset and his willingness to try things isn’t always going to meet him halfway. It will be frustrating to watch, but if he manages to keep his ice time, I believe that he will pay dividends; especially if he ends up playing with some of the more exciting young talents.
Tanner Jeannot - Old habits die hard.
I really, really wish the Bruins had learned all the way that you need to control the team identity or the team identity controls you. I really, really, really wish they did.
But we don’t live in that world. Not all the way. This is a bad signing based entirely on a reputation he hasn’t been able to live up to since he first left the Predators.
Evolving-Hockey.com
Jeannot
can do defense! We absolutely cannot distance ourselves from that; he can
do defense! He’s also big and he hits and that makes him very attractive for fans who want the Bruins and NHL General Managers who value that kind of thing and want the Bruins to embody that.
The problem is much the same as Trent Frederic; his offensive contributions as a forward counteracted just about everything else. His health has always found him paying for his physicality in time on the mend. He can be rough and tumble, but what good is it if it means it could end up being on IR?
Didn’t we try this with Trent Frederic and decide we didn’t like it there either? Why give him that for
five years?
The reasoning Sweeney gave was equally frankly absurd; with Don Sweeney stating that he brings the kind of “space” that players like Lysell and Poitras needs. I always figured that the best players in the NHL managed to both create their own space or excel with the premium space given to them; ESPECIALLY given what I just saw Connor McDavid and Brad Marchand do all season long, so you’ll forgive me if I’m mildly skeptical of this thought process in 2025.
Personally, I think it’s just hoping that the Bruins’ Bump that I mentioned in the Arvidsson section pops back up again and hoping he gains fans from becoming a surprise smash of a power forward, or at least by smashing players all over the ice.
Sean Kuraly - More of the Same
I know that people like Sean Kuraly or at the very least have positive feelings about Kuraly regarding the old days...but the Bruins aren’t in a position to let Sean Kuraly take long-term minutes, even in the depth:
Even if you liked him back in his first stint, he’s just not who he was.
Matej Blumel - Unknown Quantity
Blumel rarely played on the Dallas Stars, but he certainly was a fantastic Texas Star, which bolsters a Providence Bruins roster that had a lot of the same problems the main roster had. I’m sure he’ll be fine down with the P-B’s.
Jordan Harris - ESSEX COUNTY MENTIONED
Clearly the highlight of the day. This player has been...well, he’s definitely played on the Blue Jackets and Habs, if you want an idea of how his career has gone.
Still, he’s from Haverhill, and you can’t teach that.
Alex Steeves - Quality American Hockey League Talent
Pretty darn good AHL guy. Providence is gonna be stacked this season.
Otherwise? Inoffensive; probably not a bad option for the depth if you start losing players. I wish I had more than that to offer.
Riley Tufte - No seriously, you should probably go watch the Providence Bruins at least once this season.
He was pretty good there, no reason to believe that’s gonna change.
Jonathan Aspirot - A large AHL guy
Being 6’5 on the Wranglers is pretty tough with how good they usually are in the AHL. One has to imagine he’ll be seeing decent minutes with the P-B’s.
Luke Cavallin - Oi Mate, you got a loicense to stop shots?
An English player! Fancy that!
In general I root for guys who manage to go up to the NHL/AHL like Cavallin did after a fantastic season where he won the ECHL, so I just hope he does well in Providence.
After all that...How are we feeling? Not great.
If you came away from yesterday unhappy with how things transpired, I don’t blame you. I agree with maybe two of the moves they made total; the rest feel inconsequential at best...and actively deleterious at worst.
The strategy of the day was least somewhat understandable if done right; the high-end scoring talent that the team desperately needs amounts to Nikolaj Ehlers, maybe Evan Rodrigues if the Panthers need cap room, and that’s about it unless RFA negotiations for certain teams begin stalling out. Working at the bottom six given how useless that was over the last 82 games aside from a couple of odd streaks here or there definitely feels like a reasonable answer to start free agency.
Going after the players they did?
THAT’S where the issue came in. Retreads, Redos, and hopefully rewinding the clock on players who are coming into situations that are a helluva lot worse than the ones they left.
It’s just such a frustrating misfire of a day because if you wanted to do this? Focus on the depth and work it out from there? There were
much better options. Andrew Mangiapane hasn’t been ideal, but he’s a damn site better than Kuraly
or Jannot. I’m happy a kid from my neck of the woods is back home but Nick Perbix has been a better defender every waking second he’s been an NHLer than Harris has been. Hell, if you wanted to do a re-tread of a former Bruins forward, Dmitry Orlov is
still a free agent.
Instead...you’re trying to sell fans on the same thing you did last season; a bet that your goaltending will be good again, a hope that the fabled “Bruins Bump” comes back to life, and a power play adjustment. Steps will be taken. Pressure will allow the rookies to finally rise to the occasion. Their best and most dynamic players are still David Pastrnak, Pavel Zacha, Charlie McAvoy, Hampus Lindholm, and maybe Morgan Geekie. Their prospects are now pigeonholed into either being amazing straight out of the gate or replaced with hot dog water.
Ty Anderson noticed the same problem a lot of fans did: We’ve seen this movie before.
Lot of talk from the Bruins about a better power play, “teasing more offense” out of non-scorers, and having a better forecheck. Which is weird because they tried this a year ago and it didn’t work.
—
Ty Anderson (@ty-anderson.bsky.social) 2025-07-01T22:54:28.595Z
It just smacks of a strategic process that hasn’t caught up to the fact that your division is currently trying to get better (keyword: trying) and that they have learned nothing but the wrong lessons from getting their clocks cleaned by teams like Florida all year, and especially, arguably most damningly, haven’t learned anything from last season.
It feels an awful lot like we’re back at square one.
The Juice
I think, more than anything, you can tell that Jim Montgomery’s comment back about a year ago now sticks in the Front Office’s craw.
The infamous quote where Jim Montgomery correctly identified that he can only do so much when the team he’s set to coach fails to have any offensive spark that he can actively take advantage of.
He said that you can’t plan for a lack of Juice.
I wonder if Don and Cam actually understood that quote for what it was; a quiet plea for help. ANY kind of help in a division that’s only gotten faster, more skilled, more able to take a hit, more capable than ever before. A team that absolutely did not have the ability to meet that changing intensity without making near constant alteration to it. Instead, I think they saw it through the lens of The Identity.
The Identity that must be appeased over everything. The Identity cannot be besmirched, nor can it be controlled. It is an immutable, unchanging thing. The Identity that makes the decisions for them.
The Big Bad Bruins. Being Competitive through being big and scary. Being “hard to play against” through physicality. They weren’t that last year, and teams like the Panthers and Lightning and Golden Knights are, so they needed to make changes to be like that.
Problem is...that’s only a small part of what made the Panthers and Lightning and Golden Knights so good. It’s a surface level understanding of what made them winners. The cream of the crop of the NHL set the pace and keep that pace higher than you think and keep it going for longer than you and and you are gonna have to work your ass off to meet them halfway or you’re gonna get blown out of the water.
Pace, depth and control of those first two things are the name of the game, pace, depth and control are the “juice” of the modern NHL. They do not, and will not care about how hard you hit them nor how punchy you are in the face of awkward or downright bad hits. They set the pace. You’d better meet it.
THAT...is The Juice. The opportunity to take any score in the world and completely flip it on it’s head. The ability to take even mild mistakes and turn it into scoring chances. A constant, overbearing application of high-level hockey.
Maybe they’ll get Ehlers or take a stab at an RFA like Dmitri Voronkov or Marco Rossi with a blockbuster trade today, and we’ll all just think about this as a bad dream or a Free Agency of extreme contrasts. But as of right now? After all of that money and as this team stands? There’s still only one player with any Juice on the Boston Bruins. He was already here when you started free agency.
You are still very deficient on Juice. I don’t know if you can plan around that.
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