Mark Kastelic gave the Bruins exactly the kind of season they needed from a depth player, and then some.
Boston entered the 2025-26 campaign knowing it needed bounce-back years and outright career seasons from a few key pieces if it was going to climb back into relevance. Kastelic, a fourth-line forward, became one of the answers. In his second season with the Bruins after arriving from the Ottawa Senators in June of 2024 as part of the Linus Ullmark trade, he delivered the kind of year that helped push Boston into the Eastern Conference playoffs.
First-year coach Marco Sturm was looking for players to step forward, and Jeremy Swayman was one of them. But Kastelic joined that list, too, and his work on the fourth line mattered in a big way.
He appeared in all 82 regular-season games and posted a career-best 12 goals and 10 assists, finishing at plus-6. Most of his minutes came alongside Sean Kuraly in the middle, with rotating wings on the other side.
He also piled up 140 penalty minutes, which fit the role. The eye-opener, though, was the scoring punch: four of his 12 goals were game-winners.
For a fourth-liner, that’s a remarkable slice of production.
In the playoffs, Kastelic kept doing the dirty work. He averaged 11:25 over all six games of Boston’s first-round series against the Buffalo Sabres, which the Bruins lost in six.
His lone point came in Game 4, when he set up Sean Kuraly for a late goal with Boston shorthanded and trailing 6-0 with 40 seconds left. It was a garbage-time tally, but the fourth line’s broader assignment was clear: eat tough shifts, grind, and make Buffalo’s life miserable.
That’s what they did.
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