The Bruins may not be done making noise this offseason.
With the calendar creeping deeper into July and NHL movement slowing to a crawl, Boston still has two names hanging out there in trade chatter: Pavel Zacha and Mason Lohrei. Both players landed on Lyle Richardson’s latest trade board for Bleacher Report, a sign that the Bruins remain a team worth watching even after the early-summer flurry.
Zacha checked in at No. 12 on Richardson’s list. The 2015 first-round pick has been floated in trade talk again this offseason, and the timing makes sense: he’s entering the final season of his contract in 2026-27. Coming off a career year, the top-six center’s value is probably as high as it has ever been.
At the same time, Boston also has a clear reason to keep him around. Zacha is the Bruins’ best center, and the team is hoping to sign him to a contract extension. If that deal gets done, it would quiet any lingering questions about where he fits in Boston’s future.
Lohrei came in at No. 7 on Richardson’s board, and his placement is easy to understand. He was rumored to be nearly moved during this past season, and the Bruins’ blue line is crowded right now. He was also a healthy scratch for Boston’s final three playoff games against the Buffalo Sabres.
For Lohrei, a fresh start might make sense at this stage of his career, and he could draw interest from a team looking for help on the back end.
In Other News...
Bruins Still Have One Unsettled Problem Hanging Over This Roster
The NHL offseason has stayed relatively quiet, but the calendar is about to turn more active as arbitration cases get underway and teams start looking for late-summer fixes. For the Bruins, the biggest lingering issue is on the blue line, where they have more NHL-caliber defensemen than they can realistically fit into a nightly lineup, leaving the front office with a potential roster squeeze to manage.
Boston does have a little breathing room for now, and that may keep any decision from becoming immediate. Still, the surplus is hard to ignore, especially with other clubs around the league continuing to chase additions and the arbitration window set to keep the market moving, so the Bruins may not be done sorting out their defense corps just yet. [Read more 🡒]
Bruins Face A Tough Casey Mittelstadt Decision Sooner Than Expected
Casey Mittelstadt arrived with the kind of versatility Boston could use, and his first full look in a Bruins sweater mostly reinforced that idea. The forward spent much of last season on the wing, gave the club solid middle-six value and fit as a useful piece in a lineup that often needed players who could slide around without complaint. He is now heading into the final year of his three-year deal, which puts his future squarely on the Bruins radar sooner than they probably would have liked.
The real question is less about whether Mittelstadt can help and more about what role the Bruins see for him once this season is over. His next contract will be tied to how he performs, how the team fares and how quickly younger options continue to emerge, especially in a system where center depth is becoming a bigger part of the long view. Boston has some decisions to make, and Mittelstadts place in that picture may depend on how crowded the path gets behind him. [Read more 🡒]
Bruins Prospect Watch Comes Down To One Familiar Sweeney Question
The Bruins prospect pipeline is still being measured through the lens of Don Sweeneys draft record, and it is a familiar exercise for a franchise that has spent years trying to balance immediate contention with future depth. Since Sweeney became general manager, Boston has made 72 selections, and Brandon Carlo remains the most prominent NHL success story from that group, a reminder that the path from draft day to a real role in Boston can be long and uneven.
That is why the under-23 names without a full NHL season keep drawing attention, especially the ones developing overseas. Matvei Kotkov, Liam Pettersson and Yuri Ivanov all fit the profile of long-term projects rather than quick fixes, with each player at a different stage of proving he can eventually matter to the Bruins. The challenge for Boston is less about identifying talent than figuring out which of these faraway bets can actually close the gap between prospect status and NHL readiness. [Read more 🡒]