This is a really weird time to be a Bruins fan.
Much like the Pats, a whole generation of fans grew up with this team being, if not actually Stanley Cup champions, then being one of the most successful teams in the NHL year over year in the 2010’s. A lot of that came at the expense of the prospect cupboard, the draft picks, the maybes, the tweeners, that sort of thing, so the Bruins have had to get creative in order to find talent, and Mason Lohrei is, or maybe more accurately was, one of those major
finds; a player from NCAA hockey that clearly has some rough spots in his game, but more than enough promise to suggest that there’s a long time Bruin in this player somewhere.
…If you reaaaaaaally squint hard. Or ignore basic facts of his game.
Looking Back (2024-25)
- Statline:
- 5 goals
- 28 assists
- 33 points
- 77 games played
- 16 PIM
- Average TOI of 19:32
Mason Lohrei entered the 2024-25 season with a lot of hope behind him. He was a lot of the things fans liked in a defenseman (wasn’t a turret on skates, capable of impressive shots), while being less of the things that Bruins fans didn’t really care so much for (is over 6-foot). After such an impressive playoffs, the hope was that he would take the strong finish to his Bruins debut’ season and take it into his first full season to be a genuine dual threat defender; one that the B’s both sorely needed and would benefit from tremendously with a defense that got a little older in it’s depth that needed someone who could do zone exits for them.
So! How’d he do?
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Yeah, he didn’t quite rise to the occasion. At least at 5-on-5.
Lohrei’s game by the individual tools he has is definitely impressive, and to that end he was a pretty good player on the power play with strong passing and a helluva shot, but it also belies that when put together and sent through his ability to see the game, to identify plays as they’re happening, to keep the puck secure while also creating zone exits and trying to keep hockey flowing in the right direction for Boston…Lohrei falls flat when he is doing literally anything other than being an available player with and without the puck in the offensive zone. Over the course of the 2024-25 season, Lohrei frustrating fans to no end as he showed some flashes of the talent that kept him on the roster for those 2023-24 playoffs…and then settling right back down again into struggling to identify what the forecheck was trying to do and coughing up an unforgivable turnover or completely missing a play as it develops in front of his eyes.
This led to Lohrei being the youngest head in a three-headed monster of defenders with horrific rates of turnovers; the other two being Brandon Carlo and Andrew Peeke, averaging at least 4.15 per 60 minutes, and surrendering by far the most unblocked shots of any Bruins defender and the highest quality of shot surrendered of any Bruins defender; giving up 2.71 Expected Goals Against per 60 minutes. Add a player who struggles to read his opponent and his teammates position on the ice to a pairing with someone seemingly allergic to doing anything with the puck unsupervised, as he often was with Brandon Carlo? Utter disaster. Losing both Lindholm and McAvoy in the same year badly exposed both Lohrei and Carlo, though only one was bad enough to get traded away…for now.
The response to the season was either one of two things; completely writing the player off, or optimism that the positives of his game would inevitably outweigh the negatives. After all, the Bruins problems are much, much worse than just one guy, and he’s young still! Young for a defenseman, anyway! Definitely young for the Boston Bruins! He’ll improve, they said!
Well, looking at his 2024-25 season, that’s probably right, in that it can’t get much worse.
What’s ahead in 2025-26?
If Lohrei wants to stay on this team past his contract’s second year, then we’d better see some marked improvement.
A lot of people are still high on Lohrei, and it’s hard not to see why. He’s big, he can score, he’s a decent skater, he had a really good playoffs once, did I mention he’s big? Because him being big is often a major selling point. But now it’s no longer “cute” for him to be giving up backbreaking turnovers at 24. He has the size and speed, but his game needs to mature in order for him to be taken seriously as a major option for this squad. He needs to be able to think this game at an NHL level, or he is going to be out of the NHL much quicker than maybe even he expects. Sure, defensemen maybe come into their own later than forwards do; this is a hard game to really learn and defense is a difficult position for even die-hard fans to really wrap their head around sometimes. But if he’s here, he needs to show that serious learning was done on the game of ice hockey, and critically what happens away from the end of your stick.
So let’s step away from the physical aspect of his game and set a decent goal for him: Break even on defense.
Don’t be a complete liability in your own end most nights you are on the ice for 18-20 minutes. Be a league average player defensively. Have a couple of really bad highlights, then a couple of really good ones, and then disappear into the background radiation of the season. Because if he can do that? Mason Lohrei could be a very strong player. All the things I said about his offensive game are still true; he can still pass like some of the best playmakers and he still has a cannon shot that is wicked accurate; something that a modern defenseman kind of needs in order to survive, it’s just everything else that’s dragging him into the depths.
Because there’s a non-zero chance Mason Lohrei will be asked to play that much again. He will be asked to play above-average minutes for his skillset; Lindholm and McAvoy will likely have struggles with both getting to 100% and being asked to play about 25 minutes apiece, so Lohrei, who has skills that resemble what Hampus and Mac can do, will be called upon to fill that void.
The time for Lohrei to show that he has learned something from that experience is now, because it is an increasingly long season, and any major stagnation in his game is going to get old really fast.
