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BOSTON — The Bruins have some issues that need addressing during the offseason if they want to get better.
Not having a captain isn’t one of them.
On Wednesday at TD Garden, Don Sweeney was asked about it. So was Cam Neely. Three days before, Marco Sturm fielded questions on the topic. And shortly after that David Pastrnak and Charlie McAvoy, the two leading candidates to fill the vacancy, were pressed for their thoughts too.
Since former captain Brad Marchand was traded in March 2025, the Bruins’ captain, or lack thereof, has been obsessively over-scrutinized.
It’s a manufactured controversy.
In 2025-26, McAvoy, Pastrnak and Hampus Lindholm were each alternate captains instead of naming a single captain. That’s unusual in the NHL, but not unheard of. The reasoning made sense in Boston and it worked.
The Bruins took a huge step forward. They reestablished the culture that has defined the franchise for the last 20 years. There is no reason to mess with that.
In the National Hockey League, more than in any other sport, the reverence for being a captain borders on mythical. The “C” on a player’s jersey affords him instant respect. But it matters because leadership is important. Great hockey teams have great leadership. That can be one guy. But it doesn’t have to be.
Leadership was a strength for the 2025-26 Bruins. Pastrnak and McAvoy have different leadership strengths, but both offered something valuable. They worked well together and took it seriously. Their combined effort helped restore the team’s culture.
Both McAvoy and Pastrnak have evolved into their leadership roles and have room to grow further. But right now they’re equals. Co-captains without the official title. Smartly, Marco Sturm saw no need to solve a non-problem.
“I always said, I wanted a captain, but now, being through that first time, me as a head coach, not having a captain, and I thought it went real well,” he said. “I just, maybe because guys were really close, the leadership group, I thought they did a good job overall. Everyone had their input. There was no outsider. We always kept it really tight. So I actually didn’t mind it. But having said that, that will be more of a conversation to have with Don (Sweeney), how we are going to move forward. But personally, I liked how we handled, and especially the players, how they handled this situation all year long.”
This isn’t like having co-coaches. Leadership starts with Sturm. It doesn’t matter who wears what letter on their uniform if the team doesn’t believe in the coach. But Sturm has been effective at the top of the pyramid so far. McAvoy and Pastrnak, as well as Hampus Lindholm, Sean Kuraly and Nikita Zadorov were successful in setting the right tone in a turn-around year underneath him.
Boston Bruins defenseman Charlie McAvoy and forward David Pastrnak. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)AP
It would have been one thing if the Bruins had picked one right away before the 2025-26 season. But now elevating either McAvoy or Pastrnak also essentially means demoting the other. There’s no value to decreasing the impact of one of their voices.
If the NHL allowed co-captains, both guys would have a C on their jerseys and nobody would think twice. When the Bruins retired Zdeno Chara’s number, Boston’s long-time captain went out of his way to say that Patrice Bergeron shared the leadership role with him for much of the time that Chara was the captain. But their age and experience gap made Chara the obvious choice. If the NHL permitted co-captains, Bergeron likely would have gotten his “C” much sooner.
That’s not the case with Pastrnak and McAvoy, whose ages and experience are similar.
Plus, waiting keeps a spark-the-team option available. If the team needs a jolt of more forceful leadership, the Bruins can decide if it makes sense to charge one of them with providing it.
Until then they should be focusing on much more pressing issues, looking for a No. 1 center, a top four defenseman and another goal scorer.
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