Bruins Recap - Week Ending October 11, 2025: Quick start, depth scoring, and one key injury

(Photo Credit: Boston Bruins via X)

It's been a long offseason for the Boston Bruins, and their fans, but at long last regular season hockey is back and off to an encouraging start for the black and gold.

Here are some key takeaways through the first week of the season.

Quick Start

Atonement.

That's the word that comes to mind when thinking of the Bruins mission this season.

Learn from the mistakes of last season, correct, and move on.

So far, that's exactly what Boston has done under new head coach, Marco Sturm.

After an uninspired training camp last season, the Bruins found themselves last place in the Atlantic Division after the first month the season.

This year, however, has been a much different story.

Boston's training camp was intense, competitive, and purposeful - and it's absolutely one of the reasons that they're off to a 3-0-0 start to their season.

Now while it's important for any team in the NHL to get off to a strong start, it's particularly true for a Bruins team - that at least on paper - lacks scoring depth.

Teams can't make the playoffs in the first month or two of the season, but they can severely damage their chances by falling behind.

The Bruins know this from last year, and to their credit, they've done well so far to avoid a repeat.

The first of their three wins was an impressive 3-1 victory in Washington against a Capitals team that was the top team in the Eastern Conference last regular season.

Fraser Minten's overtime winner made for an exciting 4-3 finish in Boston's home opener against the Chicago Blackhawks in the 2nd game of a back-to-back to start the year.

More recently, Boston defeated the Buffalo Sabres 3-1 after controlling play for much of the game.

Boston's team structure has been steady, their best forwards have been their best forwards, depth scoring has been present, goaltending has been solid, and special teams have been effective.

While it's no surprise that David Pastrnak leads the team in scoring, its mildly surprising, yet encouraging, that Elias Lindholm also shares in that status with both of them having 4 points.

In fact, Lindholm, along with Pavel Zacha (3 points), each have recored at least one point in all three games so far to start the season.

Jeremy Swayman has stopped 56 of 58 shots faced in his first two appearances, and Joonas Korpisalo was lights out during overtime against the Blackhawks to even give Boston a chance at 2 points.

Special teams has also been vastly improved so far in the early going.

While the power play is just 2-for-11 (18.2%), their zone entires have been highly efficient, and they have generated a fair amount of scoring chances on most man advantage opportunities.

Their two power play tallies, however, were extremely timely and both scored by Lindholm.

The first was the eventual game winning goal in Washington after the Capitals had just tied the game, and the other was a go-ahead goal in the 3rd period of the Blackhawks game.

Now while Chicago ended up forcing overtime, what was encouraging about that goal by Boston was that it was a carry-over power play that came right at the start of the 3rd period after they had struggled to create much of anything at the end of the 2nd period - meaning they made adjustments at the intermission, and then went out and executed.

The penalty kill is still perfect and yet to allow a goal.

One of the more impressive efforts was killing off a near two minuted 5-on-3 in the season opener against the Capitals - and who knows how that game turns out if Washington puts one or two goals in.

Fair to say, it's been a team wide effort for the Bruins so far.

Depth Scoring

As mentioned above, depth scoring is one of reasons the team has been getting winning results.

Yes, Pastrnak, E. Lindholm, Zacha, and Morgan Geekie all have multiple points so far - but nearly every other skater has already chipped in offensively too.

15 of 19 skaters have recorded at least one point so far for the Bruins through 3 games.

The only one's who haven't are Viktor Arvidsson, Mason Lohrei, Marat Khusnutdinov, and Hampus Lindholm - and H. Lindholm has missed nearly all of the last two games due to injury.

Not only have depth players found the score sheet, but they've been some meaningful goals.

Down 2-1 in the 2nd period to Chicago, Tanner Jeannot tied the game for Boston after a strong shift by him Fraser Minten, and Michael Eyssimont - who also notched an assist on the play.

Then in overtime, it was Minten who was the overtime hero.

Mark Kastelic had a two point performance on Saturday against the Sabres including a 2nd period goal that proved to be the game winner.

Secondary scoring was a huge question mark for Boston coming into the season, and to be honest, it still is despite early results.

But if depth scoring becomes a consistent trait for this Bruins team, then they may have a much better season than most anticipated.

Hampus Lindholm Injured Again

Hampus Lindholm missing 65 games last season proved too much for Boston to overcome and perhaps made them a lot worse than they otherwise would, or could have been had he been healthy.

His health is a major reliance in the Bruins ability to have a bounce back season as another injury riddled campaign could spell more trouble for the black and gold.

Unfortunately, it didn't take long for Lindholm to miss time due to injury this year.

After playing opening night, Lindholm was ruled out during the first intermission of the Bruins home opener against the Blackhawks after just 4:26 of ice time.

There wasn't anything glaring as to what may have caused the injury to Lindholm but the good news - according to Marco Sturm - is that this most recent lower body injury has nothing to with the right kneecap injury that ended Lindholm's season last year.

Lindholm is currently listed as day-to-day which is a sigh of relief for the Bruins and their fans.

Still, one can't help but feel a bit uneasy about the real possibility of Lindholm possibly being an injury prone player going forward.