“We’re going to be a much more competitive team and held to the standard that Marco was talking about the other day.”
Don Sweeney believes the Bruins should be competitive this season. John Tlumacki/Globe Staff (sports)
September 9, 2025 | 3:53 PM
5 minutes to read
PLYMOUTH, Mass. — Bruins general manager Don Sweeney spoke to the media on Tuesday ahead of the Bruins’ annual golf tournament at Pinehills Golf Club in Plymouth.
With training camp set to begin on Sept. 17, Sweeney touched on several topics during his media scrum, including the expectations for the 2025-26 season and the state Boston’s leadership corps.
Here are three takeaways from his interview:
Setting high expectations
For the first time in a long time, the Bruins are entering a new season with the postseason far from a certainty.
Before the 2024-25 campaign went off the rails, the Bruins were seemingly poised to take another step forward after exceeding expectations the previous year by advancing to the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Of course, that optimism dissipated in short order.
In the span of just a few months, the Bruins fired head coach Jim Montgomery, Jeremy Swayman regressed in net, injuries to Hampus Lindholm and Charlie McAvoy decimated Boston’s blue line, and a trade-deadline firesale saw stalwarts like Brad Marchand, Charlie Coyle, Brandon Carlo, and others don new sweaters in March.
The Bruins still have some key cogs in place on their roster — headlined by David Pastrnak, McAvoy, Lindholm, and Swayman.
Still, it remains to be seen if the Bruins have the talent in place on this current depth chart to orchestrate a quick turnaround and punch their ticket back to the playoffs after a one-year hiatus.
But speaking on Tuesday, Sweeney stressed that the Bruins should be a much harder out this season, so long as the team can avoid the same missteps that sank them the previous year.
“If we stay healthy, I think we’re going to be really competitive,” Sweeney said. “Ultimately, we’re going to blend. As Marco [Sturm said] the other day, a standard has to be [set] in terms of how competitive we’re going to be in the structure that he wants to play with. Younger players, we’re going to look for them to surprise us with taking lineup spots.
“But what we’ve done is insulate our group of guys with a competitive group from the bottom up, and allow some of the younger skill, hopefully now and moving forward, [to] emerge. But we’re going to be a much more competitive team and held to the standard that Marco was talking about the other day.”
As Sturm has noted on several occasions this summer, the blueprint for the Bruins to follow this season revolves around re-establishing Boston’s defensive identity and making incremental gains on the power play.
With both McAvoy and Lindholm back in the equation, the Bruins’ porous defensive structure (3.30 goals against per game last year; 26th in the NHL) from last year is due for a rebound, especially with Sturm set to augment Boston’s system in both the neutral and defensive zone.
A normal offseason for Swayman is also set to benefit the young goalie after having a sizable set back in 2024-25, while a Bruins power play that ranked 29th in the NHL (15.2 percent) last season is also due for a stronger showing — given both the arrival of a power-play guru in Steve Spott and the personnel already in place with a top sniper in Pastrnak.
But the Bruins still have plenty of question marks surrounding the rest of their forward corps, especially when it comes to how Boston’s middle-six forward corps shakes out on a roster that could receive an influx of unproven, younger talent.
As the Bruins await to see which players can emerge with several starting roles up for grabs, Sweeney believes that the Bruins still have several foundational strengths that will be poised to rebound in 2025-26.
“We have to play to a certain standard here and a structure that Marco is going to put in place,” Sweeney said. “On an individual level, we’ve got guys that played in situations that might not have gone as well as they wanted to, and now they’re going to have their partners back, and they’re going to have a full component of their team back.
“Jeremy is in a much better place, as he spoke about the other day. So I think it’s both on the individual and the collective level that we can look for those markers.”
Preaching opportunity
While the Bruins’ free-agent signings like Tanner Jeannot and Mikey Eyssimont paint the picture of a team that wanted to add more sandpaper to their roster, Sweeney said that the Bruins are banking on several younger players to seize roles this season.
Sturm shared a similar sentiment earlier this offseason when asked about the leeway afforded to more unproven players during camp.
Prospects like Fraser Minten, Matt Poitras, and Fabian Lysell will look to secure key roles in the coming weeks, while the Bruins are also high on free-agent pickup Matej Blumel, a 25-year-old winger who scored an AHL-leading 39 goals last season.
“I think it’s really important for each and every player to understand here — there are very few spots that are just going to be taken” Sweeney said. “You’ve got the incumbent players who feel comfortable with what they’ve done in the National Hockey League. That’s obvious, but the rest of the guys really need to understand — like there’s going to be a competition for ice time and for roster spots.
“And that was by design. All summer long, we made a massive change in direction last year at the deadline and now we need to course correct. We need to take steps forward and be get back to the level, as Marco talked about the level of standard that we all expect here.”
No timeline for a new captain
The writing is on the wall that David Pastrnak and Charlie McAvoy are the two leaders in the clubhouse to take on the role as the next captain of the Bruins.
But Sweeney confirmed on Tuesday that the team will open the season with no set captain — instead opting for the process of appointing a new leader to come more organically as the season progresses.
“Everything’s on the table right now. We’ve been forward with everybody, and honest with everybody, that we’re going to start without it,” Sweeney said of the captaincy. “We’ve got a leadership group that’s been meeting amongst themselves and and I think eventually somebody will emerge as the guy that should be the next captain. It comes with a lot of responsibility.
“So I’d like to see a little more organic, natural, progression of it. … I think now we just move forward with the leadership group that’s going to be established and let Marco have his own communication with them, and let them have communication with themselves in terms of what direction they want to take this team and who emerges as the ultimate leader and the next captain of the Boston Bruins.”
Conor Ryan is a staff writer covering the Bruins, Celtics, Patriots, and Red Sox for Boston.com, a role he has held since 2023.
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