The 2024 calendar year had its fun moments for the Bruins, to be sure. The parade of Hall of Famers and longtime fan favorites of past decades in the club’s Centennial celebration was a blast. There was one big, dramatic moment on the ice as well.

But the Bruins remain a team in transition. Bereft of high draft picks after years of going for it at the trade deadline, the B’s are battling to stay in the hunt as teams in the Atlantic Division are rising around them. They stumbled out of the gate in 2024-25 and it cost a good coach his job.

Now they’ve righted the ship in many ways, but it remains to be seen if they are a true Stanley Cup contender. But before we get used to writing a new year on our checks, let’s take a look back on the year that was, with the Top 10 moments of 2024.

1. May 4 – David Pastrnak burns the Maple Leafs again. A year after the juggernaut B’s were stunned in the first round by the Florida Panthers, the B’s nearly became the first team to blow 3-1 series leads in back-to-back seasons. Pastrnak, called out by coach Jim Montgomery for ineffective play earlier in the series, prevented that from happening. In Game 7, Hampus Lindholm first tied the game in the third period. Then in overtime, he sent a long pass off the end boards, it bounced perfectly back to the rushing Pastrnak and he tucked it past goalie Ilya Samsonov for as dramatic a series-ending goal as you’ll see.

2. May 17 – The Panthers foil the Bruins again. The B’s got their fans hopes up by blowing out their new nemesis in Florida in Game 1, but they could not win a home game, losing all three at the Garden. The Panthers got away with the things they usually get away with. Sam Bennett cleverly got away with a butt end that concussed Brad Marchand in Game 3 at the Garden, knocking him out for a couple of games. Bennett also got away with crosschecking Charlie Coyle into Jeremy Swayman to score the tying goal in Game 4. But the B’s still had a chance to force a Game 7 in Florida with one win at home and they couldn’t pull it off, losing 2-1 to end their 2023-24 season. Asked what he saw as the main reason for the loss, Montgomery lamented, “We can’t win every game, 2-1.”

3. June 26 – Bruins trade Linus Ullmark. The B’s had tried to move one half of their outstanding goaltending tandem at the trade deadline, but Ullmark had exercised his no-trade clause. Just minutes before puck drop for the Stanley Cup Final Game 7 between the Panthers and Edmonton Oilers, the club announced they had indeed moved Ullmark to the Ottawa Senators for goalie Joonas Korpisalo, center Mark Kastelic and a first-round draft pick that would become Dean Letourneau. Kastelic and Korpisalo have provided positive early returns while the book is still out on Letourneau, now at Boston College. Ullmark, meanwhile, has elevated a divisional rival for the B’s, who could well be battling with the Senators for the final Eastern Conference playoff spot. Ullmark is again a Vezina award candidate.

4. July 1 – Bruins lean into size and defense. Two of the rocks of the B’s success for a decade and a half were defensemen Zdeno Chara and two-way center Patrice Bergeron, both of whom will be headed to the Hockey Hall of Fame some day. While no one expects Nikita Zadorov and Elias Lindholm to fill those shoes, it’s not hard to see the thread to the B’s most recent past successes. GM Don Sweeney inked Zadorov to a six-year, $30 million and Lindholm to a seven-year, $54.25 million deal. The initial yield was minimal, but both Lindholm and Zadorov have been playing better lately. Said Sweeney when he inked the two players: “Sometimes you have to win, 2-1.”

5. Oct. 1 – “I know there are 64 million reasons….” Those were the words of team president Cam Neely, suggesting that the club had offered an eight-year contract worth $8 million a year to RFA goalie Jeremy Swayman. To that point, the negotiation had begun to deteriorate. The B’s had the right to take Swayman to arbitration that would guarantee at least a short-term deal. Swayman had done it in the summer of 2023 and didn’t like the process. But the B’s refrained from filing. Whether or not that was a good faith decision, it didn’t make reaching a deal any easier. Swayman missed the entire training camp as negotiations dragged on. His agent, Lewis Gross, vehemently denied that that $64 million figure had ever been discussed.

6. Oct. 6 – Swayman signs eight-year, $66 million deal. Neely and the Bruins came in for heavy criticism for his comment less than a week earlier, but it certainly seemed that helped to break the deadlock. Meanwhile, Swayman got himself a good deal that will pay him $8.25 million a season. He also set the goaltending market. Before long, his old friend Ullmark signed a four-year extension with the Senators for the same AAV while Dallas’ Jake Oettinger signed the exact same eight-year, $66 million extension. It came at a cost for Swayman, however, as his lost training camp put him behind the 8-ball. His game is still not quite where he hoped it would be.

7. Oct. 8 – Season opener: Panthers 6, Bruins 4. The game was not as close as the score indicated. The Panthers, who raised the franchise’s first Stanley Cup banner, proved in the opener that they were not only still better than the B’s but that they had widened the gap. The B’s came into the game looking to avenge some of the Panthers’ physical transgressions from the most recent playoff series, but the Panthers would not engage and they ran away with the game. The B’s were looking to make a statement, but it was the Panthers who did so.

8. Nov. 3 – Pastrnak benched. The B’s season was fraying. Montgomery had visibly berated captain Marchand on the bench in a win over Colorado earlier in the season. But it appeared as though the B’s might be turning a corner. They had shut out the Flyers the day before and were in the process of shutting out the Kraken at the Garden. Late in the second period, Pastrnak turned over the puck on a power play and Montgomery wasn’t having it. Pastrnak, the B’s best offensive player, never left the bench in the third period. It was both shocking and understandable. It was also, in some ways, Montgomery’s last stand.

9. Nov. 19 – Bruins fire Montgomery. Coming off a bad overtime loss to St. Louis and an even worse drubbing at the hands of Columbus, both at home, the B’s whacked Montgomery after two seasons and change. There was some shock outside of Boston. Montgomery won the Jack Adams Award in his first season in the B’s record-breaking 65-win season and he had a 120-41-23 record behind the Boston bench. But there were very visible cracks. It didn’t help that Montgomery was in the last year of his contract and he declined at least one extension offer. Five days later, Montgomery was signed to a five-year deal to coach the Blues, where he had played and had been an assistant coach before coming to the Bruins. Long-time Bruin assistant Joe Sacco was installed as the interim head coach.

10. Dec. 1 – Bruins beat Montreal, 6-3. The game not only signified the end of the club’s note-perfect, year-long celebration of their Centennial, it also started a four-game win streak, the B’s longest of the season. They hadn’t won more than two in a row before that. Under Sacco, the B’s have vastly improved their slot defense and, in turn, they are starting to score a few more goals. That is still a challenge for this B’s team and they have had their lapses, most notably a two-game losing streak in Winnipeg and Seattle in which they were outscored 13-2. But they are a better team now than before the coaching change. The coming year will tell us if they’re good enough.