Inside Max Lundgren’s Path to Bruins Development Camp, ‘Calm and Controlled’

BOSTON –– A 10-year-old Max Lundgren stood in a crowd of young fans.

The Boston Bruins prospect was in Gotland, the Swedish Island where he was born, to watch a game featuring NHLers from his home country. Lundgren played both hockey and soccer at the time and had yet to pick which one to commit to fully. After the matchup, he was hoping to get memorabilia from some of Sweden’s on-ice stars.

“I got some autographs, and then this guy comes up and gives me a stick, and then someone behind me snags it from me,” Lundgren said. “Jacob Markstrom, NHL goalie, saw that. He came up to me and gave me his stick and was very nice about it. I wanted to be like him a little bit. That’s when I decided I was going to be a hockey player.”​

That moment led to Lundgren, who is undrafted, signing a one-year, entry-level contract with the B’s on March 29. He is attending the Bruins’ 2026 Development Camp at Warrior Ice Arena this week. But it was not always a linear path.

Lundgren spent his youth career in Sweden with the Rögle BK club before making the jump to North American hockey in the USHL for the 2022-23 season.

​“I didn’t really know what to do. At some point, I know my hockey career will end, so I wanted to get an education with my hockey career,” Lundgren said. “I saw some people start to go to the U.S. to play junior hockey first and then maybe go to college.”

He went the NCAA route after that one year with the Des Moines Buccaneers, and was garnering interest from the college hockey world. However, Lundgren had played in the SHL (professional ice hockey league in Sweden) during the 2021-22 campaign, which, at the time, ruled him ineligible for his freshman season.

“Basically every team dropped me that I was talking to,” Lundgren said. “No one wanted me anymore until Merrimack reached out to say they had a solution for it. I am very grateful for that. How good they’ve been to me at Merrimack. I really loved my time there.”

Scott Borek, the head coach of Merrimack College’s men’s hockey team, remembers his assistant coach, Dan Jewell, coming to him about Lundgren. Jewell explained the situation, arguing that taking Lundgren on, even if he could not play for a year, would be worth it for Merrimack’s goaltender room.

“Having a guy that can’t play for us didn’t really excite me,” Borek said. “In the end, Dan convinced me that that was important for our program, and it turns out he was 100% correct.”

Borek knew it was the right decision long before Lundgren played his first NCAA game in his sophomore year.

Merrimack’s opening road trip during the 2023-24 season was to Arizona State University. Because of the ineligibility, Lundgren was not allowed to travel with the team. The group took a red-eye home on Saturday night following the end of the weekend series. When they returned to campus at 4:00 a.m. to bring their equipment back to the rink, Lundgren was sitting in the locker room.

“We get there, he gets up, recognizes we’re back, and he’s out unpacking the bus and he’s loading the stick rack like all the freshmen do. Then every game we played moving forward in that season, he was always in the room when we got back. Played at BU, he was in at 11:30 p.m.; we’d play at Maine, he was here at 2:30 a.m.,” Borek said. “It really became something and still is now. He has set that standard in our program. It is pretty cool. I call it the Max effect. He did that when he wasn’t even able to play.”

Lundgren also used the year to adjust to living away from home, he said. He took his studies seriously, as a business major with a concentration in finance. He learned to enjoy school. He went hard at every practice.

“I wasn’t a big fan when I went to high school back in Sweden, but I had a different approach now,” Lundgren said. “So I gave it everything I got, and I started to like it a lot. I walked graduation, but I am still taking a few summer classes, too.”

The NCAA granted Lundgren the right to play the following year. While Borek started by using Lundgren in a goalie rotation, it did not last long.

​“It became obvious that we had a 1A and that no one is going to take the net away from him,” Borek said.

Lundgren posted a 2.90 goals against average and .909 save percentage through 24 games during his first showing in college hockey. He followed it up with a dazzling performance in the 2025-26 season for his school.

The 6-foot-5, 230-pound netminder led Merrimack to its first Hockey East title in program history with a career-high 49-saves in the championship game against UConn on March 21 at TD Garden. Lundgren earned a 24-save shutout against UMass Amherst in the semifinal.

Lundgren finished his final season of collegiate play with a 2.55 GAA and .920 SV% through 39 games, with a 21-16-2 record. He led all Hockey East goalies in wins and paced all the NCAA in saves (1,134), which also set the single-season Merrimack program record for saves in a season. Lundgren was unanimously selected as the Hockey East Tournament MVP after his squad lifted the trophy.

​“It was awesome. I kind of blacked out, really, during that whole tournament. It was just so much fun. When I got back to Sweden, it was the first time I really looked over it, and it was just surreal. Can’t really believe it still that we were there, we won it, especially when no one thought we would win,” Lundgren said. “It was just unbelievable to go do that. As a team, we knew we could do it.”​

Lundgren’s humility was striking when talking about the accomplishments he had at Merrimack.

“It comes with a huge responsibility. And I’ve never really been that goalie that’s been like the first goalie. I always have had to work my way up. So having that was new for me as well. It was a big challenge, but I think I…”​

He did not finish the sentence. Lundgren did not want to admit that he, factually, had an outstanding season. The 24-year-old wants more, and that is part of the reason the Bruins jumped to sign him. Mike Dunham, Boston’s goaltender development coach, kept an eye on Lundgren.

“I got to see him a couple times last year, obviously, and the first thing that sticks out is his size in the net – he covers a lot of net. He’s very calm and controlled in his game, so he uses his size to his advantage, and he moves well on second and third chances,” Dunham said. “Last year, he had a great season. He seemed comfortable moving around the crease, confident. We like those attributes. And he stops pucks. He gets in the way of pucks – that’s what you want out of a goalie.”

Dunham and the B’s are constantly working and thinking about their netminder depth, pipeline and route to the NHL. The organization selected two more goalies this weekend at the 2026 NHL Draft: Yuri Ivanov (second round, 56th overall) and Roberto Henriquez (sixth round, 170th overall). It is a unique position to develop.

“They’re an individual position in a team sport, and goalies seem to take longer to develop. The speed of the game when you get to the high levels is so quick, and it takes a little longer for goalies to get used to that speed, under control, moving their body around the crease and making the saves, fighting through traffic,” Dunham said. “We felt that we needed a couple guys to get into the system and have a chance to develop them. We target areas that we like of goaltenders, and we saw those in the two guys that we drafted this year, and we were excited to get them into the organization.”

Dunham works with all of the Bruins’ goalie prospects, including Lundgren, during the season to fine-tune their games to align to the pro level. A lot of the feedback comes via video, phone calls and, if possible, on-ice work with Dunham.

​“At the end of the day, my job is to see those guys make it to the NHL. And every goalie is different, so it’s about what each individual goalie needs and wants,” Dunham said. “It’s great to give these kids a chance because they love the game. And they want to play in the NHL. That’s their dream, and they’re working towards it.”

Lundgren is taking every lesson he can this week at development camp. He sat at his stall, likely with the widest smile in the locker room, following his first session with the B’s prospects group on Monday. And Lundgren has a lot of people cheering him on.

​“Just proud, you know?” Borek said. “I always tell our guys, ‘The most important skill is the guy with the whistle has to want to coach you, because the minute he doesn’t, your career is basically over.’ There is not a guy who meets Max that doesn’t want to coach him. And I’m sure the Bruins guys will feel that way. We felt that way every day.”