Oct. 21st: Weekes followed up on yesterday’s report, saying it’ll be a $4MM AAV for Khusnutdinov on a multi-year deal. ESPN’s Emily Kaplan specified, reporting that Khusnutdinov will sign a three-year, $11.85MM ($3.95MM AAV) extension, keeping him in the spoked ‘B’ through the 2029-30 season. The Bruins have since confirmed the extension and the details Kaplan shared earlier.
Oct. 20th: According to Kevin Weekes, the Boston Bruins and Marat Khusnutdinov are closing in on a contract extension.
Since joining the team, Khusnutdinov has proven himself as a middle-six player, scoring 20 goals for 43 points in a little over 100 games. Five of those have been tallied through nine games in 2026-27 this season. Head Coach Marco Sturm has used him as a ‘Swiss Army Knife’ in all situations.
Regarding the term, his UFA year (2030-31) feels important. Boston has six UFA’s expiring in that year, including Tanner Jeannot, JJ Peterka, Charlie McAvoy, Hampus Lindholm, Nikita Zadorov, and William Borgen. This could potentially be a 3-year deal to keep Khusnutdinov’s RFA status in 2029-30 with no other expiring deals to worry about, or five to six years to carry into his UFA seasons, thus solidifying him as part of the team’s outer core.
Among U24 Bruins since 2020, ‘Khusy’ ended up being one of two players to score 30+ points and 10+ goals in a single season this decade; neither he nor Fraser Minten (the other player) was originally drafted by Boston. Both proved that they could bring merit in their roles and thus elevated themselves throughout the season, so much so that they played alongside David Pastrnak for a stretch of time, registering a +10 goal differential for a team-best 75% goals for percentage as a line.
A good piece of business from Boston when this extension gets done, Khusnutdinov has been a pleasant addition to the Bruins’ forward group, dating back to being brought in as the underrated piece in the team’s deal that sent Justin Brazeau to the Minnesota Wild. Marat fell out of favor in Minnesota, following a rather lackluster deployment within their NHL lineup.
During the Bruins’ downturn of tanking in the latter half of the 2024-25 season, he presented himself as a player who was a do-it-all forward who showed flashes of offensive promise. He scored three goals for five points in just 18 games, signing a two-year, $1.85MM ($925K AAV) contract to remain a Bruin for two more campaigns.
In 2025-26, Khusutdinov found himself having to work his way up the food chain of a packed Bruins bottom-six that saw an influx of NHL-caliber forwards signed in from the 2025 offseason. As many questioned whether he’d crack the squad out of training camp, he made the cut, but only as the team’s extra forward.
But as his reliability began to shine, the Bruins began to trust him more, especially in late-game scenarios. 14 of his goals tallied in 2025-26 came after the start of the third period. His 15 goals for 33 points in 77 NHL games last season were the most he’d received up to date in his career, demonstrating the reliability and resilience that Boston had been looking for from a younger player. Defensively, he showed his worth, tying Pavel Zacha for 22 takeaways, and was one of four Bruins with a full season of games to register over a takeaway per 60 minutes.
Five of those 33 points came in a fever-dream contest on Jan. 10 at home, where he scored four goals and one assist in the 10-2 win over the New York Rangers; his first hat trick and he became the first player to score four goals in a game while never having a multi-goal game entering play since Auston Matthews (Oct. 12, 2016) and Sam Bennett (Jan. 13, 2016).
Photo Credit: Winslow Townson-Imagn Images