Boston Bruins
“We’ll make a decision here before the season starts and we go from there.”
PLYMOUTH — Hockey is almost here.
The Boston Bruins will take the first steps toward bracing for a new season on Friday, when rookie camp officially opens at Warrior Ice Arena.
While Boston’s full-squad training camp doesn’t begin until Sept. 16, Bruins head coach Marco Sturm already feels like he’s back in the swing of things entering his second year as Boston’s bench boss — starting with the team’s annual Boston Bruins Foundation Golf Tournament on Wednesday.
“You go back at it as a coach, as a coaching staff, and try to find areas where we can get better and make a difference this year. There’s a lot of things going on with the draft, free agency, new signings, trades, whatever it is. You kind of try to adapt a few things, a few players, too, and here we are,” Sturm said at Pinehills Golf Club in Plymouth. “I am really happy and very excited to be back and get things going again.”
One of the top storylines entering camp for the Bruins is the ongoing discourse over whether or not the Bruins will name a captain for the 2026-27 season. The Bruins have not had a captain in place since the club traded Brad Marchand to the Florida Panthers on March 7, 2025 — with a leadership group led by David Pastrnak and Charlie McAvoy holding court over the dressing room last year.
Both Pastrnak and McAvoy appear to be the top candidates to get a “C” stitched on their sweaters this fall. Still, Bruins president Cam Neely did raise a few eyebrows last month when he raised a scenario where Boston — confident in their leadership-by-committee approach — doesn’t name a captain for the second year in a row.
Speaking Wednesday, Sturm said the Bruins are still assessing their options for captaincy — but added that the team hopes to decide at some point this fall.
“We’re still in the process. It’s been a lot of chatting, a lot of communication, but I think it’s always better when everyone comes back, and back in Boston, back in the same place, and sit down at one table,” Sturm said. “And like I said, we’ve been communicating, but we’ll make a decision here before the season starts and we go from there.”
While Sturm and the Bruins’ top brass like Don Sweeney and Neely all hold plenty of weight over sorting out Boston’s leadership hierarchy, Sturm acknowledged that Boston’s roster — featuring numerous players who have played alongside Pastrnak and McAvoy for years — will also have input.
“I always talk to my players, and some more than others, and kind of get a little bit of feedback [of] what is happening in the room. It’s an honest group and I trust my players, and they always give me good feedback,” Sturm said. “But they’re not going to say, ‘This guy should be the captain or not.’ But I think some of the guys give me good feedback about what is good. It’s not just Sweens and Cam. I think we listen to everyone, and especially the guys in the room.”
Beyond the captaincy, Sturm and his coaching staff will have their work cut out for them when it comes to untangling several logjams across the depth chart — especially when it comes to sorting through a D corps that includes 10 waiver-eligible blueliners: McAvoy, Hampus Lindholm, Nikita Zadorov, Will Borgen, Connor Clifton, Mason Lohrei, Jonathan Aspirot, Henri Jokiharju, Jordan Harris, and Frederic Brunet.
Boston will also need to assess whether or not younger players like Fraser Minten, Marat Khusnutdinov, and James Hagens are ready for featured roles higher up in the lineup — with plenty of eyes on Hagens, 19, going into his first full season in the pro ranks.
Incorporating young talent into Boston’s established core stands as a necessity for the Bruins if they hope to emerge from this extended retool and entrench themselves as legitimate contenders in due time.
But Sturm and his staff will also have a shorter runway this year to assess the roster — given that there are only four total preseason games — down from six games — and less than two full weeks of camp before the 2026-27 season begins on Tuesday, Sept. 29.
“The younger guys, they don’t really have the opportunities anymore. If you look at rookie camp [and the] tournament, it’s only two games,” Sturm said. “Maybe they’re going to play a game or two, that’s it. There’s not too many opportunities to shine and prove to me that [they] should make the team. So, it’s going to get harder for all of us: coaches, organization, players. So, it will actually be interesting to see how it turns out.”
Even though Sturm already has a strong rapport with several players in Boston’s room, he expects additional lineup tweaks once the regular season begins — especially with the Bruins needing to account for the addition of offseason pickups like JJ Peterka, Will Borgen, and Connor Clifton.
“The good thing is I’ve been around already one year, so that means I have a pretty good idea about some of our players,” Sturm said. “Having said that, now we have a guy like JJ, we have Borgen, Cliffy, we have a few guys, new guys here in the lineup. So that might take time.
“The first choice might be not the right one as a pair, or as a line. So definitely there will be some changes throughout camp, preseason, even start of the season. Who knows? So, we’ve just got to be patient, got to find the right fit like pretty much we did last year, and then go from there.”
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