Ranking Boston Bruins’ all-time Top 5 strongest NHL draft classes

The Boston Bruins hold the seventh-overall pick in the 2025 NHL Draft after a terrible 2024-25 season. The pick allows the Bruins’ top pick a player who could potentially transform the team into a highly successful one.

With that in mind, it’s worth taking a stroll down memory lane to look at the top five Boston Bruins draft classes. The list features three straight seasons in which the Bruins struck gold.

The list, unfortunately, shows a considerable gap as the 1980s and 1990s featured draft classes with notable players sparsely contained throughout.

Top 5 Boston Bruins’ strongest draft classes

#5 2016

This list begins in 2016 when the Boston Bruins took Charlie McAvoy with the 14th overall pick out of Boston University. He’s played in over 500 games, becoming the B’s franchise blue liner.

Other players taken in the 2016 draft class are Trent Frederic at #29 and Ryan Lindgren at #49. Frederic was traded to the Edmonton Oilers at this year’s trade deadline.

Lindgren was part of the infamous Rick Nash trade with the New York Rangers in 2018. Lindgren spent time with the Rangers and recently moved to the Colorado Avalanche.

#4 2015

The 2015 Boston Bruins draft class featured two first-round busts in Jakub Zboril and Zachary Senyshyn. However, the Bruins hit paydirt with Jake DeBrusk at #14 and Brandon Carlo at #37.

Boston also landed other solid players in Jeremy Lauzon at #52 and Dan Vladar at #75.

None of the players mentioned in this draft are with the team at the moment. But in general terms, the draft class was solid as DeBrusk and Carlo were key members of the Bruins team that made it to the Stanley Cup Final in 2019.

#3 2014

The Boston Bruins had just five picks in the 2015 NHL Draft. Four of them became solid NHLers, with one becoming the team’s current superstar.

The Bruins took David Pastrnak with the 25th overall pick. In the second round, Boston picked Ryan Donato and Danton Heinen with the 116th pick. Anders Bjork rounded out the class at #146.

#2 2006

The 2006 draft was highly important for two key reasons. First, the B’s picked Phil Kessel fifth overall. Kessel became the main piece in the trade with the Toronto Maple Leafs that landed Boston two first-round picks. The picks ended up becoming Dougie Hamilton and Tyler Seguin.

The second reason came in the third round. At #71, the Bruins picked a fella named Brad Marchand. Marchand would play over 1,000 games with the B’s, winning the 2011 Stanley Cup. He was named captain after Patrice Bergeron’s departure.

The other notable pick in 2006 was Milan Lucic. Lucic was a staple with the Bruins until his trade to the LA Kings in 2015.

#1 1979

The best draft for the Boston Bruins goes all the way to 1979. The Bruins’ top pick was Hall of Famer Ray Bourque at #8. Bourque was a legend of the 1980s and 1990s, eventually winning a Stanley Cup with the Colorado Avalanche in 2001.

Brad McCrimmon was the Bruins’ second first-rounder, playing in over 1,000 NHL games, though he only played three seasons in Boston.

Mike Krushelnyski went to the Bruins at #120 in the sixth round. Krushelnyski played parts of three seasons before getting traded to the Edmonton Oilers. He would win three Cups in Edmonton before being packaged to Los Angeles in the 1988 Wayne Gretzky trade.