Why Bruins should call up top prospects to boost struggling offense originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston
The Boston Bruins cannot score goals on a consistent basis. And this is no longer just a trend. This is who they are.
We’re 40 games into the 2024-25 NHL season. That’s a pretty good sample size. The Bruins are the fourth-lowest scoring team in the league with 2.58 goals scored per game, and their power play ranks 30th out of 32 teams with a 12.9 percent success rate.
Thursday night’s 2-1 loss to the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden was a familiar one for the Bruins. They outplayed the opponent for long stretches of the game, only to lose because the team couldn’t bury its scoring chances.
The B’s had a 77-49 edge in shot attempts, a 33-27 lead in shots on net, a 27-23 advantage in scoring chances and produced 11 high-danger chances in all situations against the Rangers. Sure, Rangers goalie Jonathan Quick played fantastic and made some unreal saves. The future Hall of Famer is still capable of brilliance.
But the real story is a lack of finish from the Bruins’ forwards.
The Bruins badly need a shakeup offensively. Making a trade for a legit top-six forward would be the preferred upgrade, but the B’s don’t have many Grade A trade assets, and they also lack salary cap space. Those two factors make finding a workable trade difficult.
So what’s the short-term solution? They should call up some of their top prospects from the AHL’s Providence Bruins.
They should start with Matthew Poitras. The young center was sent to Providence in November after a tough start in Boston, which wasn’t a surprise considering he was working himself back from shoulder surgery last February. Poitras has found his game in the AHL with 18 points (eight goals, 10 assists) in 19 games, including a seven-game goal streak from Dec. 6 through Dec. 18. He played well with the Bruins as a rookie last season, so he’s capable of producing versus NHL competition. His offensive skill set is very much needed in Boston right now.
Another option in Providence is Georgii Merkulov. He has 26 points in 28 games for Providence, and he has led the P-Bruins in scoring each of the last two seasons. There’s not much more room for improvement in the AHL for him.
It’s time to see what he can do against NHL opponents over a long stretch. That last part is key — each time Merkulov has been summoned to Boston, he barely gets a chance to prove himself. He came up in November and played in three…