The Blackhawks brief road trip to open the 2025-26 season continues on Thursday night in Boston where they’ll face the Bruins.
For the first time in nearly a decade, the Bruins are coming off of a season that did not end with a playoff berth. The Bruins broke hockey records back in 2022-23 with a 135-point season but have plummeted downward in the last two seasons, finishing at 109 in 2023-24 before crash-landing at 76 last season. That subpar season led to the ouster of coach Jim Montgomery, who was replaced by interim coach Joe Sacco before Marco Sturm was given the official head coach title this summer, the same Sturm who played over 900 games across 14 NHL seasons largely split between Boston and San Jose.
Sturm inherits a team that didn’t do anything well last year: as the tale of the tape down below indicates. They couldn’t score, couldn’t stop teams from scoring, couldn’t possess the puck well, couldn’t score on the power play and couldn’t kill penalties. Seems bad, right? It’s not a wildly different roster in Boston this season, either, save for the departures of Brad Marchand and Charlie Coyle back in March via trade. David Pastrnak played all 82 last season and should be one of the league’s top offensive threats once again. Morgan Geekie, Pavel Zacha and Elias Lindholm still occupy spots in the top six, as does Casey Middlestadt, who was a deadline acquisition late last season. The blue line is still much the same, featuring Charlie McAvoy, Hampus Lindholm, Mason Lohrei and old friends Henri Jokiharju and Nikita Zadorov.
Jeremy Swayman remains the No. 1 goalie in net after platooning with Linus Ullmark for a few seasons. Swayman got paid one year ago to the tune of $66 million over eight years and responded with the worst season of his career in 2024-25: 22-29-7 record, 3.11 goals-against average and .892 save percentage. He certainly wasn’t aided by the team in front of him, but a rebound season from Swayman will be essential to any postseason aspirations for Boston in 2026. He did look good during Boston’s season opener: a 3-1 win on the road over the Capitals on Wednesday night. It’s unlikely that their legs will be too heavy this early in ths season, though. Below is the Bruins lineup from that game, with the top line of Geekie-Lindholm-Pastrnak doing all the damage against Washington. Perhaps it’s a good night to audition that shutdown line centered by Jason Dickinson that Blashill was discussing in the preseason?
As for the Hawks, news from the morning skate continued what was noted during the third period of the season opener and reaffirmed at Wednesday’s practice: Ryan Donato has been moved on the top line, replaced by Colton Dach, who gets to skate alongside Connor Bedard and Andre Burakovsky. Donato is down on the third line, opposite Ilya Mikheyev with Dickinson in the middle. Alex Vlasic also appears on the verge of his season debut after missing Tuesday’s opener while healing from a skate cut sustained during the preseason.
Blackhawks lineup in morning skate Burakovsky-Bedard-Dach Teräväinen-Nazar-Bertuzzi Donato-Dickinson-Mikheyev Foligno-Greene-Lafferty Vlasic-Rinzel Kaiser-Levshunov Grzelyck-Murphy
— Scott Powers (@scottpowers.bsky.social) October 9, 2025 at 10:44 AM
Blashill recently said he won’t be divulging starting goalie news on gameday, which is a bit of an annoying old-school habit but nothing to make too big of a deal about. Arguments could be made for either Spencer Knight or Arvid Soderblom to be in net for this game, so we’ll find out along with everyone else during the pregame skate.
Chicago was clearly outlclassed by its opponent on Tuesday but that’s not the case this time around. The Blackhawks beat the Bruins late last season with a youth-filled lineup similar to what’ll be on the ice for this one, scoring a trio of goals in about 90 seconds during the third period to run away with that victory. Wouldn’t mind a similar result from this evening’s events.
Let’s go Hawks.
Tale of the Tape
Blackhawks — Statistic — Bruins
44.09% (32nd) — 5-on-5 Corsi For — 47.72% (27th)
43.03% (32nd) — 5-on-5 Expected goals for — 47.96% (27th)
2.73 (26th) — Goals per game — 2.71 (27th)
3.56 (31st) — Goals against per game — 3.30 (26th)
44.8% (31st) — Faceoffs — 51.7% (8th)
24.9% (7th) — Power play — 15.2% (29th)
79.3% (14th) — Penalty kill — 76.3% (24th)
(All stats from last season)
How to watch
When: 6 p.m. CT
Where: TD Garden, Boston
TV: CHSN
Webstream: ESPN+, Hulu
Radio: WGN 720