The Bruins have spent the past two seasons trying to piece together life without Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci, and a new set of center rankings shows just how far they still have to go.
In Harman Dayal’s breakdown for The Athletic, Boston’s top-six center group landed in the seventh of eight tiers, the one labeled “Major Weakness.” The Bruins were grouped with five other teams there, and only Calgary sat in the bottom tier.
Among Eastern Conference clubs, Boston finished last, with Philadelphia the only other East team in that same seventh tier. Across the league, the Bruins checked in 29th.
That result lines up with what the Bruins themselves have already admitted. At his end-of-season press conference in May, Cam Neely said plainly: “ I mean, we all in this room recognize we don’t have a true number one [center], ” Neely said in May.
“And that’s something that we want to try to rectify, whether it’s this offseason or those guys (Fraser Minten and James Hagens) growing into it. But it’s something that we know that’s needed.”
Pavel Zacha sits at the top of Boston’s depth chart down the middle, but he’s not the true 1C Neely was talking about. Zacha turned in a career year last season with 30 goals, 65 points and 22 power play points, and he’s been clear that he’s comfortable at center. Even so, he’s generally viewed as a high-end second-line center, and Dayal slotted him that way as well.
There’s also the matter of how Boston used him. Zacha spent most of the 2025-26 season on the second line, away from David Pastrnak, and he remains a possible fit next to Pastrnak and JJ Peterka this season.
Elias Lindholm was supposed to help fill the Bergeron void when the Bruins brought him in after Bergeron left, but his Boston run has been defined by a recurring back injury and two sub-50-point seasons. Neely’s comments in May suggested the contract may not have delivered what the Bruins expected, and before the draft Don Sweeney put it bluntly when talking about Lindholm’s place in the lineup: “ but it just might be this is what his new level is, and you have to accept that. ”
Dayal was even sharper in his assessment, saying the “48 points he scored last season are inflated by all the time he spent playing with Pastrnak.”
The Bruins do have a young center option in Fraser Minten, though he’s still early in his career and has just 107 NHL games behind him. The 22-year-old finished his first full NHL season with 35 points, going 17-18-35, but he was held without a point in six playoff games. When Neely talked about the lack of a 1C, Minten and James Hagens were part of the answer he had in mind.
Dayal isn’t sold on Minten as a top-six center and isn’t sure how much more offense he can unlock as he develops.
Boston would love to fix the problem this summer, but that’s easier said than done. Sweeney has pointed out more than once that true No. 1 centers are rare, and that they almost never hit the open market. He also defended the group the Bruins already have.
“I mean, our centers, by committee, have done a good job. We’ve actually had players playing on the wing that when we have injuries can move into the middle of the ice … so we’re fortunate in that regard,” Sweeney said before the draft.
“If you can go out and make a trade, in your description of who might be a true number one, then clearly every team wants to do that. And I think I said this before, I’ll repeat myself, the price was high for a certain player on a team because he looks around and says, ‘I don’t know if there are 32 of those players you might want to describe.’”
He added: “But we feel very good about where our guys are at, and they did a good job this year. So for me, I don’t look at this as a negative right now.
I think the depth of our center position is really good. I think with James [Hagens] potentially going in the middle of the ice, Dean [Letourneau] coming in behind it, Will Moore plays the center.
We’re positioned.”
So the Bruins’ reality is pretty clear: they know they don’t have a true 1C, they know it’s been that way since Bergeron left, and they know finding one won’t be simple. For now, they’re betting on the committee approach and on the idea that the answer might still be growing inside the organization.
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