The Bruins have kept after the right-shot defense market, and this time they found a trade partner.
Boston, which had already added Connor Clifton back in free agency for the third pair, still needed help higher up the blue line behind Charlie McAvoy. Free agency didn’t offer much, and the club’s search for a top-four right shot led to a deal with the New York Rangers for Will Borgen.
Borgen gives Don Sweeney another defenseman with term and a track record of handling a regular NHL workload. The 29-year-old was drafted by Buffalo in the fourth round of the 2015 Entry Draft, taken by Seattle in the 2021 Expansion Draft, and later moved to New York in 2024. He has spent the last two seasons with the Rangers after that trade.
Last season, Borgen played 75 games for New York and posted five goals and 15 points while logging a little more than 18 minutes per night. In 2024-25, he appeared in 51 games with four goals and 13 points. Before arriving in Manhattan, he also had back-to-back 82-game seasons with the Kraken in 2022-23 and 2023-24.
His contract situation is part of the appeal for Boston. Borgen is entering the second year of a five-year deal with a $4.1 million AAV, which lines up with the Bruins’ preference for players they can keep under team control. That’s the same kind of thinking that guided their acquisition of JJ Peterka from the Utah Mammoth last week.
The cost to get Borgen was also manageable. Per Mollie Walker of the New York Post, Boston is sending New York a 2027 second-round pick and a conditional 2028 third-round pick. The condition is tied to the Rangers making the conference final in the next two years and Borgen appearing in 50% of Boston’s games.
In Other News...
Bruins Risk Missing On The One Blue Line Fix Fans Want
The Bruins entered NHL free agency with a clear need on the back end, and the search is centered on a right-shot defenseman. Boston has the cap room to make a move, but the market is thin enough that the club may have to balance fit, price and risk if it wants to shore up a blue line that still feels one piece short.
A few names have surfaced as the kind of stopgaps or swings that could make sense, from Jacob Trouba and John Klingberg to Nick Blankenburg, with Rasmus Andersson also in the mix as the most obvious impact target. Boston has shown interest in at least one right-shot defenseman, and it has stayed in touch with Andrew Peekes camp, which leaves the Bruins weighing whether the cleanest answer is still out there or whether the safer move is to lean back into an option they already know. [Read more 🡒]
Bruins Offseason Moves Are Raising One Big Question For Don Sweeney
The Bruins have spent the opening stretch of the offseason making sure Don Sweeney has plenty of options on the board before the 2026-27 season, and the pattern is easy to spot. Boston has already added to the mix with a trade for a top-six winger, then followed it by bringing back Lukas Reichel and Navrin Mutter while also adding Attilio Biasca and Simon Zajicek on new deals. It is the kind of activity that signals urgency, but also a front office still trying to sort out exactly how the roster should look when camp opens.
Ivan Ivan adds another layer to that picture. Boston brought him in from the Colorado Avalanche and then locked him in on a one-year contract, another move that suggests the Bruins are willing to keep tinkering as they try to fill out the depth chart through trades and free agency. The larger question for Sweeney is whether these pieces are the start of a clearer plan or simply the latest steps in a summer that still has one or two important decisions left to make. [Read more 🡒]