Boston Bruins
“I felt like I hit rock bottom pretty early, at least mentally, and and got stuck there.”
A candid Morgan Geekie didn’t mince words on Thursday when asked about the sizable expectations placed on his shoulders this season.
“I’m sure nobody that’s interviewing me now thought I was going to score 33 goals last year,” the 27-year-old winger said.
Geekie’s sentiments were about as accurate as the sharp wrist shot that he used to shred opposing defenses last season.
Once viewed as more of a bottom-six, ancillary player during past stops in Carolina and Seattle, Geekie has emerged into a legitimate top-six weapon since arriving in Boston.
One of the few bright spots amid an otherwise miserable 2024-25 season, Geekie shattered his previous career-high in tallies (17) — lighting the lamp 33 times while skating alongside David Pastrnak on Boston’s top line.
But on a 2025-26 Bruins squad entering camp with few conduits of consistent offense beyond Pastrnak, Geekie’s breakthrough season might have to be the norm moving forward if this team wants to regularly land punches in the offensive zone.
“I’ve got nothing to lose,” Geekie said of surpassing 30 goals once again. “Like, if I don’t, I don’t. I think we’ve got a lot of steps to take as a team before I kind of focus on that. This is a group that I’m super happy with. I love the additions we made and I think a lot of people outside this room don’t believe that we can get the job done.
“But I know inside these four walls — [Don Sweeney] touched on it yesterday, just how well we can come together as a group and start to build off it. I think today was a great building block for us. We’re just going to keep going off that.”
Geekie may not be fretting over any additional pressure of being Boston’s second go-to scorer beyond Pastrnak.
But his body of work speaks for itself.
Even though Geekie’s 22.0 shooting percentage last season signals some expected regression, his stats were also bolstered by a limited reliance on special-teams play for production.
In total, 26 of Geekie’s 33 goals came at 5-on-5 play — which tied him with Pastrnak, Kyle Connor, and Cole Caufield for the second-most 5-on-5 goals last season. The only player with more 5-on-5 goals last season was Tage Thompson (33).
An expected uptick in power-play production from Boston’s 29th-ranked man advantage last year could offset some of Geekie’s projected scoring dip during even-strength action.
Even more reps with Pastrnak and center Elias Lindholm could also benefit all parties.
After the trade deadline on March 7, the Geekie-Lindholm-Pastrnak line logged 78 minutes of 5-on-5 ice time, per Natural Stat Trick. And over that stretch, the Bruins had a 47-29 edge in shots, a 53-29 advantage in scoring chances, and outscored opponents, 16-2.
“We get along off the ice, too, so I think that contributes to a lot. We have a great group in here,” Geekie said of his reps with Lindholm. “We had a lot of good new additions, and I think for me and Lindy, I don’t know . . . we just kind of fed off each other toward the end of the year, and we’re just looking to build off that come Game 1.”
But beyond his strong supporting cast, Geekie is also feels more comfortable entering his third season in Boston.
Of course, inking a six-year, $33 million contract extension will do that.
But beyond the security offered by his new deal, Geekie feels he’s in a better spot mentally after trudging through a brutal start to the 2024-25 season.
At one point, it looked as though Geekie was going to be on the outside looking in at Boston’s starting lineup last fall — with Jim Montgomery benching him for three games amid a sustained scoring slump.
After scoring just one goal and three points over his first 18 games, Geekie rebounded under interim head coach Joe Sacco — scoring 32 goals and 53 points over his final 59 games of the season.
Geekie carrying that same rate of production into 2025-26 would be a welcome sight for Marco Sturm and the Bruins.
But for a re-focused Geekie, he’s trying to not get caught up in the big picture as he enters his first season as a top-line talent.
“I kind of got to a point last year where I didn’t really have anything to lose at that point,” Geekie said of his scoring surge. “I felt like I hit rock bottom pretty early, at least mentally, and and got stuck there. I had a lot of guys help me out of there in this room. And I thank everybody in this organization for kind of picking me up.
“You kind of start to play free,” Geekie added. “It’s probably a different situation than I’m in now. But the same kind of mentality, you just kind of got to look at it one day at a time and just try to get better each day.”
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