Boston Bruins
“We have to come together as a team. I don’t care who’s out there or not, that’s how we’re going to start.”
Marco Sturm and the 2025-26 Bruins took to the ice at Warrior Ice Arena for the first time as a group on Thursday — with Boston holding two on-ice session as part of their first day of practices during training camp.
For Boston’s new bench boss, Thursday represented an opportunity for a reshaped Boston roster to start building some chemistry, as well as the first chance to map out some of the changes that Sturm is looking to implement for a team in transition.
Here are six takeaways from Boston’s first training-camp practice:
Preaching speed, simplicity
If there were one or two overarching themes from Sturm’s first practice as Boston’s coach, it was pace and clear-cut messaging.
Both of Boston’s practices on Thursday — split between two groups of the club’s 50-plus players on the camp roster — primarily focused on breakouts, zone entries, and forechecking, with Sturm and his coaching staff placing a premium on straight-line skating and a simplified approach with the puck.
While Sturm acknowledged that the Bruins will focus more on the D-zone and the necessarily tweaks required in that area on Friday, Thursday’s session was all about mapping out a black-and-white approach to Boston’s revamped offensive approach.
“It was direct. It was pretty easy, I would say, for your brain to get back on track,” Nikita Zadorov said of Boston’s first practice. “Get back to knowing your routes, touches, where you want to be position-wise, system-wise, not thinking too much out there. Playing fast.
“I mean, if you look at the Stanley Cup champion in the past two years — they’re the fastest team in the league, they play a super-aggressive style, and I think a lot of teams try to copy that. And that’s our goal as well.”
The 2025-26 Bruins don’t have the scoring depth that the Florida Panthers boast.
But, as Boston tries to find ways to generate offense beyond relying on David Pastrnak’s one-timer, Sturm’s focus on higher shot volumes and a heavy forechecking game could be the prescription needed for this roster to consistently generate scoring chances.
“He had a smile on his face explaining it to us,” forward Mikey Eyssimont said of Sturm’s message so far. “Because the style of play it looks like we’re gonna be playing — it’s a fast one, an offensive minded one, a ‘smell blood in the water and go play offense’ one.
“Obviously, it all starts with structure, and that’s something that we’re all gonna have to buy in and learn here at camp. But from there, there’s a lot of speed here, and I think it’s going to be a really fun, exciting style of hockey to play.”
Meshing the roster together
Given the number of players in place on Boston’s camp roster, each of the team’s two groups have their own dressing rooms within Warrior Ice Arena over the first week-plus of practices.
This year, “Group A” holds court within the team’s usual dressing room at Warrior — while “Group B” is relegated to one of the auxiliary locker rooms for the time being.
That set-up isn’t different from previous camps. But, the personnel in each room has changed when compared to last fall.
Even with both groups featuring a blend of established veterans and younger prospects, Nikita Zadorov noted that last year’s camp had a majority of the team’s top players staying in their usual digs in the main dressing room, while many of the rookies and other unproven players were pushed to the smaller room, regardless of whether they were in Group A or B.
That isn’t the case this year, with Group A — regardless of seniority or other accolades — getting the main dressing room.
“This year we made an adjustment. We didn’t keep all the older guys in the main room,” Zadorov said. “So Group A is in this room and group B is in that room. So you kind of get to see the young guys. You know them, because last year you were going on the ice, and you have some young guys you have never seen before.
“You don’t even know how they look, what their names are, but now you’re in the same room with them. … I like it.”
Sturm said that the change was his decision, noting that camp is the opportune time for veterans to start building a good rapport and chemistry with young players — some of whom could be primed for greater roles on this team moving forward.
“No, that’s my call. And I made that call because I’ve always done it that way,” Sturm said. “I don’t care who’s in which group and which locker room. I told Group A, though — I’ve got to say — they have to buy a beer for Group B, because they’re in a [expletive] locker room, I would say. So they have to buy them a beer.
“But we want to be a team. We want to come together and Group A, it’s, for me, one team. Group B, it’s another team. And it makes absolutely no sense to split them up, right? And again, we have to come together as a team. I don’t care who’s out there or not, that’s how we’re going to start.”
Pastrnak the lone absence
It was nearly a full-squad practice on Thursday, with Pastrnak standing as the only absence due to tendinitis.
Speaking on Thursday, Sturm confirmed that Pastrnak is dealing with tendinitis in his knee — but stressed that he isn’t concerned about it being an ongoing issue.
“You guys saw him around here last week too. He could have skated today, tomorrow, whatever it is,” Sturm said of Pastrnak, adding: “We just want to be careful. That’s all. And that’s why I’m not worried at all.
“He’s knocking on my door already every day. He wants to skate. We just have to pull him back a little bit, but we just want to make sure he’s going to be ready to go next week.”
While Pastrnak wasn’t a participant during Thursday’s practices, he was spotted on the ice nearly an hour before those sessions began.
An early look at lines
Here’s a look at how Boston’s lines shook out during Thursday’s practices:
Group A
Morgan Geekie – Elias Lindholm – Viktor Arvidsson
Marat Khusnutdinov / Joey Abate – Casey Mittelstadt – Alex Steeves
Johnny Beecher – Fraser Minten – Fabian Lysell
Georgii Merkulov – John Farinacci / Brett Harrison – Dans Locmelis
Mason Lohrei – Charlie McAvoy
Nikita Zadorov – Henri Jokiharju
Michael Callahan – Billy Sweezey
Loke Johansson – Ty Gallagher
Jeremy Swayman
Michael DiPietro
Ben Hrebik
Group B
Matej Blumel – Pavel Zacha – Tanner Jeannot
Mikey Eyssimont – Sean Kuraly – Mark Kastelic
Riley Tufte – Matt Poitras – Riley Duran
Jeffrey Viel – Patrick Brown – Dalton Bancroft / Jake Schmaltz
Hampus Lindholm – Andrew Peeke
Jordan Harris – Victor Soderstrom
Frederic Brunet – Jonathan Aspirot
Jackson Edward – Colin Felix / Max Wanner
Joonas Korpisalo
Simon Zajicek
Luke Cavallin
Sturm noted that Arvidsson was skating in place of Pastrnak on Boston’s projected top line with Lindholm and Geekie, with Boston’s coach noting that the team’s lines might be in a state of flux over the next few practices as he tries to find “pairs” that click together.
A potential fourth-line unit of Eyssimont-Kuraly-Kastelic makes plenty of sense as a trio, while pairing Zacha alongside a fellow Czech forward in Matej Blumel is also worth following as camp progresses.
Andrew Peeke seems to be the first man up to replace Brandon Carlo as Hampus Lindholm’s new D partner on the right side, while it should come as little surprise that Zadorov opened camp alongside Jokiharju.
In the 273:39 of 5-on-5 ice time that Zadorov and Jokiharju logged together last season during Boston’s miserable stretch run, the team actually held a 12-5 edge on goals scored.
A helping hand
After scoring an AHL-leading 39 goals this past season with the Texas Stars, Blumel is entering Bruins camp with his best shot yet of cracking an NHL roster.
Beyond the opportunity afforded to him with several roster spots up for grabs, the 25-year-old winger noted that he already feels at home with his new team given the presence of other Czech players on the roster.
“I stayed for a week with Pav,” Blumel said of Zacha. “He showed me around, showed me almost every district here, and I really like the city. It’s very close to European cities. So it feels really nice to be here, and feels very nice to have some guys around me who can show me around.”
One of the elder statesmen
This isn’t be Sean Kuraly’s first stint with the Bruins.
But, the veteran center is finding himself in some new surroundings within Boston’s leadership hierarchy.
The 32-year-old pivot enters camp as the second-oldest player on Boston’s training camp roster — with only 33-year-old Patrick Brown passing him in trips around the sun.
While both Charlie McAvoy and Pastrnak are expected to lead the way as Boston’s top authorities in the dressing room, Kuraly believes that he can serve as a reliable resource — especially as one of the players who once shared a room with the likes of Zdeno Chara, Patrice Bergeron, and others.
“I came into a really fortunate situation around some really experienced and just really savvy veteran players and good people,” Kuraly said of his previous tenure in Boston from 2016-21. “And I was really fortunate to be around that.
“I think as you go on, you just kind of want to try and provide some similar things for people that are coming in behind you — and some of the benefits that I was just lucky and happenstance to be a part of. And you just try and provide that for teammates that are coming in with you. And I’m not saying I can provide that to the extent that I was afforded, but just trying to be a small piece of it.”
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