When the Boston Bruins lost Patrice Bergeron to retirement, a big void was left in the organization. As a perfect frontline center, he constantly gave the opposition’s best players a hard time. Year after year, his two-way game would earn him the majority of Selke’s votes.
Fast forward to this offseason, when facing a second year without their former captain, the Bruins thought they had his replacement. No one else is Bergeron, but former Calgary Flames center Elias Lindholm is another player who has been praised for his two-way play. In fact, when Bergeron won the Selke in 2022, Lindholm was finalist with the Calgary Flames.
Things didn’t go as planned at the start of the first season of a new seven-year contract for Lindholm. The Bruins find themselves in a tough spot with a 3-6-1 record in their last 10 games, dropping them to the first wildcard spot.
With the Bruins barely holding off other young, playoff-hungry teams like the Ottawa Senators and Detroit Red Wings, they’ll need Lindholm to get through his own rough patch.
Since joining the Bruins, Lindholm has only 21 points in 45 games, a pace of 38 points. That would be the lowest pace of his career for a full season since his freshman year in 2013-14. Although he earns north of $7 million AAV, that pace won’t be enough.
It was only a few years ago that Lindholm had the best season of his career with Calgary, the player the Bruins were hoping to have. Since being split from the power line with Matthew Tkachuck and Johnny Gaudreau, however, Lindholm hasn’t been close to that 42-goal, 82-point production.
Unlike his two teammates, the Flames got something in return for Lindholm before he left the team. In a trade with the Vancouver Canucks last season, general manager Craig Conroy traded Elias Lindholm for Andrei Kuzmenko, Hunter Brzustewicz, Joni Jurmo, a 2024 first-round pick (Matvei Gridin) and a conditional 2024 pick who is remained in the fourth round and was subsequently traded.
The Flames did well in this exchange, as Brzustewicz went to a phenomenal start to his professional career. Prospect Gridin scored 24 goals and 49 points in 37 games in his first year in the QMJHL. Jurmo has come to play in North America, spending time in the AHL and ECHL so far this year.
If Kuzmenko can get out of funk he was in this year since he scored 25 points in his first 29 games with the Flames and increase its value For this year’s NHL trade deadline, Conroy could earn a trade grade of A-plus.
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