The Sunday Read: Inside the Bruins’ Road to the NHL Draft

BUFFALO –– Don Sweeney, Ryan Nadeau, Dean Malkoc and Darren Yopyk walk down the hall at KeyBank Center in Buffalo, New York.

The Boston Bruins’ general manager and the leaders of his scouting staff enter their designated suite, with a Spoked-B sign hanging out front, and take their seats around the table.

It is the NHL Scouting Combine week, and this is where Sweeney and Co. will sit for eight hours a day, interviewing the eligible prospects ahead of the draft later this month. The Bruins have the 23rd overall pick in 2026 and seven total selections. Their draft list has already been prepped. These Combine conversations are rounding out their profiles of the players.​

“You are trying to find a bit more about the personality of the player and how he sees his own game. Some of that is a little rehearsed in terms of how they might prepare an answer, but you have ways to kind of pull on string and redirect a little bit when they do give an answer. Find out a little bit about their family history, how they got involved in the game, how much they love the game, and maybe sometimes what they don’t like about it,” Sweeney said. “It isn’t changing your opinion necessarily of the player, but it does give you an idea about personality and allows you to ask questions between now and draft day.”

Sweeney, Nadeau (Director of Amateur Scouting), Malkoc (Associate Director of Amateur Scouting) and Yopyk (Assistant Director of Amateur Scouting) bounce off of each other’s questions, touching on the details of a prospect’s game and the off-ice experiences that inform the human, not the player. It is like a well-oiled power play the way they orchestrate interviews. Notes are taken, comments are made once the door closes, and then it starts again.

“Most interviews are pretty standard. We kind of got a bit of a routine now. All the kids have filled out a questionnaire previously. Sometimes it’s just following up on some of their answers, making sure we understand why they answered in a certain way,” Nadeau said. “We don’t want to be too intimidating of a room for the kids. We try to keep it a little bit light while also getting whatever information we may need.”

Nadeau has been with the organization for over 20 years and in his current role for nine seasons. He and his scouting staff work year-round to prepare for the final stretch in June. They wrapped up their scouting meetings in Vermont at the end of May and are now dotting their i’s and crossing their t’s ahead of welcoming the newest faces to the Bruins organization.

“The combine has been a staple for us since I’ve been doing it,” Nadeau said. “Finally just really tighten up our draft board, which is already in a good spot. There may be a tiny bit of shuffling here and there. June is a lot of time spent on the phone following up with coaches, trainers, management of junior teams, colleges. Just trying to get any last background information that we need.”

Nadeau and his team don’t just go in depth on the players who could be in the Bruins’ range; they create folders on everyone in the first round and pockets throughout the draft. Especially this year, Boston had the chance to make another top 10 selection. When the B’s acquired Fraser Minten from the Toronto Maple Leafs in March 2025, the package included a 2025 fourth-round pick and a 2026 conditional first-round pick. That 2026 first-round pick was top-five protected, and the Maple Leafs ultimately won the draft lottery and are picking first overall.

While the Bruins’ focus shifts to the latter half of the first round now, the work does not go to waste because, as Nadeau has learned, anything can happen on draft day. When Nadeau boarded his flight to Las Vegas, Nevada, for the 2024 NHL Draft, Boston was not picking in the first round. Then, on June 24, Sweeney dealt Linus Ullmark to the Ottawa Senators for Mark Kastelic, Joonas Koprisalo and a 2024 first-round pick. That turned into Dean Letourneau, who was selected 25th overall by the Bruins.

“In the draft, you never know. You could always trade…There was a little extra emphasis this year on sort of a top 10, much like last year. Our job is to make sure we know all the players, the entire spectrum and go from there,” Nadeau said. “As it turned out, coming out of the lottery, I guess we had a little less concern in that area. But I still feel really good about where the draft board is at the spot in case there’s any movement or different things happening.”

Nadeau and the Bruins’ amateur scouts are all over the country and world throughout the NHL season getting eyes on the next draft class. There are more tools at their disposal now, too, that help the group feel confident in their decisions.

Jeremy Rogalski, the Director of Hockey Analytics, leads the data efforts for the B’s. Rogalski joined the organization in 2009 as an assistant to hockey administration, transitioned to video analyst in 2010, was named hockey operations assistant in 2015 and earned his current position in 2017. He leans on his experience in all corners of the Bruins’ hockey operations department to present the scouts with useful, supplemental information to their eye tests.

“Our involvement has grown over time. It is kind of like a process partnership now from start to finish…When it comes to evaluating the players, obviously we have the views, we’ve got video and we’ve got data tools, too. Ten years ago we might look at a guy and say, ‘Hey, he had 60 points in his draft year, that’s pretty good. That normally goes in the second round.’ Now we have data behind that that says, ‘Okay, this is how that player plays,’” Rogalski said. “So we can start to break down those micro-conversations, the fit – and that’s where it really gets interesting to the scouts. Like, ‘I saw the guy move the puck really well in my views.’ Well, we’ve got 50 other games that say he tends not to move the puck very well, so let’s work through that. How did you see him move the puck well? Was he just using his partner?’ It gets pretty in-depth when you start working through all those elements.”

The grind never truly ends for Rogalski and the crew. The Hlinka Gretzky Cup – one of the premier annual international under-18 tournaments – happens every August and features a good chunk of players who will be eligible for the following draft.​

“Typically, we note guys during their underage years – so the year before they’re draft eligible. So what happens is the draft happens in June and then free agency. We usually take a week or two to take a breather but also debrief on the draft – how it went, how did our process go?” Rogalski said. “And then literally, I will start to turn over. We’ve got all the players in our system notated. So I will start to move everybody who was drafted out of the system and start to tag the guys already for next year. The middle of July is really when we start to look at the 2027 draft.”​

The collaboration between Rogalski and his hockey analytics group with Nadeau and his scouting staff allows the Bruins to make the most informed picks.

“There are a lot of inputs that go into our draft board. Certainly, the analytics group has a say in that,” Nadeau said. “As the draft unfolds, we collaborate with [Rogalski] and his group a lot. They become a big part of how we maneuver, how we operate, what selections we make.”

Since Nadeau started with the B’s, the use of technology leading up to the draft has streamlined, but not taken over, the process. More videos of the players are available no matter where the scouts are based, but Nadeau strongly believes in the in-person assessment of a prospect. It is a balance of qualitative and quantitative feedback.

“There is just a complete different feel for it. Seeing a game live, there are so many more of your senses being used, and you get to see things that you just don’t get a feel for off video. Video is a tool and helps,” Nadeau said. “Myself personally, I'd rather see a kid play live first and have a better feel for the player and then follow up with video. It’s a lot harder to do the other way around, I feel.”

The player profiles Nadeau, Rogalski and their counterparts gather hold value beyond the draft. Often, there are skaters that they see as a strong fit for the Bruins system, but are not in the position to select them. Nadeau used Minten and Marat Khusnutdinov as two examples; both of whom had stand-out seasons for the B’s this year.

Minten was a second-round pick (38th overall) of the Maple Leafs in 2022. Boston’s first selection in that draft came at No. 54, where they took Matthew Poitras. Flash forward to March 2025, when putting together a trade package with Toronto, Sweeney and his staff knew they wanted Minten as a piece because of their previous research, which was transferred to the Bruins’ pro scouts.

​Khusnutdinov was a similar case. He was picked in the second round (37th overall) by the Minnesota Wild in the 2020 NHL Draft. Boston wasn’t on the clock until No. 58, where they took Mason Lohrei. When Sweeney dealt Justin Brazeau to Minnesota in March 2025, they knew Khusnutdinov would be an impactful return.

Khusnutdinov and Minten played up and down the lineup this year, including on the top trio with David Pastrnak. Khusnutdinov finished his first full year in Boston with 33 points (15 goals, 18 assists); Minten had 35 points (17 goals, 18 assists).

“We had met with Fraser multiple times, so we felt like we knew him well. Khusnutdinov is another recent example of a player that I think in the draft we had a lot of time for; it just wasn’t the way the draft went, and where we had picks just didn’t work out. But we know the player well, so we feel really comfortable there,” Nadeau said. “[Sweeney] is obviously really involved and knowledgeable on where we are from a draft standpoint, so that transitions over to pro. For [Sweeney] to have sat in those interviews and had already met Fraser, he’d been in all the discussions about Khusnutdinov and he went and saw him play. He’s just a lot more familiar when we get into trade talks later on, that base is already there.”

As for this year’s draft, Sweeney is looking to find a piece that eventually benefits the NHL club and can grow in the B’s system.

“You have to find NHL players each and every year,” Sweeney said. “We have to identify; we talked a little bit about this offseason about improving our overall speed and skill. The bottom line is, you have to have NHL players. That’s the lifeline of every organization. You see, free agency is much more contracted now, so you have to draft and develop.”​

Nadeau and Rogalski are on the same page – and they’re energized for the hunt.

“This is fun. It never gets old. It only happens once a year for us, and it’s a culmination of a lot of work,” Nadeau said. “My passion is the draft, my passion is finding hockey players that can help the Bruins win. It’s the same with all of our scouts. For us, this is the best time of year leading into the draft, getting down to it.”

Rogalski is the person who actually presses the button at the draft that officially picks and submits the players for the Bruins. He will do it seven times this year, welcoming a new class of players to the Boston family.

​“I love chasing the best drafts we can and working with a group that I really like working with and click well with to make it happen for the success of that group, too,” Rogalski said. “We remember the decision spaces we were in when we chose to make those picks, too. You want to do the best you can in that. You want to learn from it. And then you get to know the people, too, so you’re thrilled for the kids when they make it because you believed in them. They put a lot of work in and got to where they deserved to be.”