- Mason Lohrei sat through a season of trade rumors and is still a Bruin with camp a month out
- Boston has nine defensemen signed who played NHL games last season
- Read below for what Lohrei said about getting benched against the Sabres
Mason Lohrei heard his name in trade rumors for most of last season. He is still a Bruin, and he sounds fine with having to win the job back.
The 25-year-old defenseman spoke with Jim McBride of the Boston Globe after a summer skate at Warrior Ice Arena, and the subject was a blue line that has gotten very crowded.
“I kind of like that competition aspect of it, especially going into camp, knowing you’ve got to earn your spot. And we have a lot of really good NHL-caliber defensemen that are going to be competing for spots. And I think that’s going to just help everybody raise their compete level. I know it’s going to help me, for sure.”
Crowded is putting it kindly. Boston has Charlie McAvoy, Hampus Lindholm, Nikita Zadorov, Will Borgen, Connor Clifton, Jonathan Aspirot, Henri Jokiharju and Jordan Harris under contract alongside Lohrei.
Prospect Frederic Brunet is expected to get a long look in the preseason on top of that. Nine NHL bodies, six spots, and three of them headed to Providence when camp breaks.
Lohrei surfaced in Calgary trade chatter around Rasmus Andersson last winter, then again in a floated Darnell Nurse swap with Edmonton. Neither one happened, and Nurse wound up in San Jose on July 1.
What still stings is the finish. Lohrei played the first three games of the first-round series against Buffalo and watched the last three from the press box.
McBride asked him how that sat.
“Obviously you’re pretty [ticked] off with that. I don’t know, you go into the beginning of the summer and it’s still fresh, so it sucks.”
Marco Sturm told him at the end of the year not to let three games bury everything else, and the numbers give the coach a point. Lohrei scored seven goals and put up 26 points in 73 games while finishing plus-17, a swing of 60 from the minus-43 he wore in 2024-25.
That first full season came with injuries to McAvoy and Lindholm and a workload he had no business carrying. Take a look at how year two went:
His deal runs through 2027-28 at a $3.2 million cap hit. Boston added Borgen and Clifton on July 1, which is the short version of how a 73-game regular ended up fighting for ice.
He wants all of it, he told the Globe, every night and every situation. Sturm has about a month to turn nine defensemen into six.
