Boston Bruins

Boston Bruins

Several high-level Bruins prospects showed out in the first semifinal of the 73rd Annual Beanpot at TD Garden on Monday night, helping No. 11 Boston College (15-8-1) topple Harvard, 5-1, to get back to the championship game for a second straight year. Perhaps no outing was bigger than those of Boston's two most recent first-round selections, as 2025 seventh-over-all pick James Hagens (two goals, assist) and 2024 25th-overall pick Dean Letourneau (goal, assist) combined to anchor an early offensive eruption. Paired with Boston's 2021 seventh-round selection Andre Gasseau's two assists to help him surpass 100 career points, fans saw a glimpse at the possible future in the Bruins' home arena.

When the New York Rangers hired Mike Sullivan to replace Peter Laviolette, many were thrilled. Sullivan, a former back-to-back Stanley Cup winning coach, felt like a huge upgrade from Laviolette, and a potential overseer of a comeback season. Sullivan was the right coach to bring the Rangers back from their blip of a season and get the most out of this veteran core.

In their last home game until February 26, the B's beat the Philadelphia Flyers, 6-3, on Thursday to sweep all nine home games in January and improve their home record to 21-8-1. Fraser Minten and Casey Mittelstadt led the way with three-point nights (1-2-3 totals each) and Jeremy Swayman made 33 saves. The only blemish on the night was the loss of Pavel Zacha to an upper body injury, leaving the game with 6:55 left in the second period. His prognosis was not immediately known.

For now at least, Bruins' coach Marco Sturm termed Elias Lindholm as "day-to-day" with an upper body injury, though he there was the caveat that the No. 1 centerman was still scheduled to visit the doctors when Sturm met with reporters after the B's morning skate on Thursday. The immediate future, however, was that Lindholm would be a scratch for Thursday's game against the Philadelphia Flyers. That precipitated the call-up of one Matt Poitras.

Those are the games we'll talk about after our careers and stuff like that are done.

We talked before the game that this game was huge,

The Bruins placed left-shot defenseman Vladislav Kolyachonok on waivers on Tuesday for the purpose of sending him to Providence. The B's had claimed the 24-year-old Kolyachonok off waivers from Dallas on December 16 at a time that their blue line was hit by injuries but he got into only two games for the B's since then. Showing an eagerness to jump into the play, he nonetheless posted no points and was minus-1.

If Mason Lohrei's days as a Bruin are numbered, he's making them count. Lohrei has been the subject of rampant speculation the last couple of days as part of a possible package for Calgary Flames defenseman Rasmus Andersson. If it was bothering him, he didn't show it. The defenseman scored his fifth and sixth goals of the season in the Bruins' 5-2 victory over the Blackhawks in Chicago on Saturday night.

The club moved defenseman Henri Jokiharju to a non-roster designation due to a family matter and recalled fellow right-shot defenseman Billy Sweezey from Providence. Sweezey had traveled with the club as insurance on the two-game road trip because of a lower-body injury to Andrew Peeke. But before Saturday's win over Chicago, Hampus Lindholm was activated off injured reserve and Sweezey was reassigned. Now he's back in the NHL for the time being.

A man was arrested Saturday after a fight during a Bruins game at TD Garden that led to another man being hospitalized with a head injury, police said. The man arrested, identified by police as Aaron Tucker, 49, is set to be arraigned at Boston Municipal Court Monday on charges of assault and battery resulting in serious bodily injury, and assault and battery against a 60+ or disabled victim, according to a Boston police report.