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4 years ago

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8:00 AM ET

  • Ryan Hockensmith

Editor’s note: This story contains descriptions of an attempted sexual assault.

ON A STUNNING Saturday morning in March, Justin Herron decides to go for a walk. Lifting or running is out of the question — his whole body is run down from the grueling offseason work he’s doing at LeCharles Bentley’s offensive-line camp in Chandler, Arizona. But Herron is somebody who keeps moving, keeps grinding. He doesn’t take many days off — a walk instead of a run is about the best he can do.

Herron started six games for the New England Patriots last year, after the Pats picked him in the sixth round last year following a solid career at Wake Forest. But he knows he’ll be fighting for playing time again this year — he began the 2021 season as a swing guy on the line behind tackles Trent Brown and Isaiah Wynn — so he’s determined to make the most out of every day of his offseason.

On sore days, Kiwanis Park, near his home in Tempe, is the perfect place for Herron. It’s isolated enough — there is just the right amount of people to not feel alone, but still find solitude amongst the trees, sports fields and the lake in the middle of the park.

At 11 a.m. on this spectacular spring day of sun and mid-70s weather, Herron is winding down his walk when he hears yelling. He can’t make out what the words are, or where they’re coming from, but he pulls out his earbuds and starts to scan the park. Eventually he zeroes in on a man and woman about 75 yards from him.

He’s not sure exactly what he is seeing, but his eyes lock with the woman’s. Herron pauses a long time as he tells this part of the story. “There was a moment that I don’t really want to get into,” he says. “There was just one moment when I realized how bad it was, but I don’t want to talk about it. It’s private.”

In that moment, he knows his walk is over. It’s time to run.

BACK IN 2018, right before Wake Forest’s spring football season began, Herron anxiously awaited the voting results for team captain. He was a redshirt junior offensive lineman for the Demon Deacons, and he was sure he’d done everything right — he’d started his entire career, done countless extra hours of film work, chosen to double major in psychology and communication. Teammates had watched him work his way up from being a lightly recruited late-bloomer in high school to a reliable, All-ACC-level tackle. To make this next step, to be recognized as one of the most valuable leaders on his team, would mean something — everything — to him.

But when the votes were tallied, Herron’s teammates picked six other players, including two offensive linemen not named Justin Herron.

It tore him up. He just couldn’t fathom what his teammates didn’t see in him. After a week of letting it gnaw at him, Herron went and met with head coach Dave Clawson. “Coach, I do everything right,” Herron said. “I get there early. I watch more film than anybody. I do everything right. Why didn’t I get elected as a captain? What else can I do?”

“Justin, you do do everything right,” Clawson told him. “We always see you doing extra work. You’re a tremendous competitor and a very good player. But football is a team sport. You need to set a good example and bring other guys with you.”

Herron realized Clawson was right. He was a perfectly competent guy to line up alongside, but he wasn’t a giver. On a talented (all five starters ended up in the NFL) and very competitive Wake line, he tended to keep to himself. He often did workouts and film study alone. Clawson told him that the best leaders — the best people, really — weren’t just singular, widely respected talents; they knew how to lift others up at the same time. “That changed me,” Herron says.

He headed into the 2018 season on a mission to be a better teammate. He had never been selfish but he wanted to be selfless now. That August, he started mentoring the guys competing for his position. As Wake’s season kicked off, away at Tulane, coaches were seeing a new Herron. Then, in that first game, Herron suffered an ACL tear and was out for the year. Coaches weren’t sure how Herron would respond. “Everybody sulks for a while after a season-ending injury,” Clawson says.

But a week later, right after the surgery, Herron began to show up at every meeting, film session and practice. He started producing typed-up weekly breakdowns of upcoming opponents for his teammates. The younger linemen began to gravitate toward him, and Herron became an unofficial assistant coach.

Herron considered leaving Wake after that year for the NFL draft (he’d graduated already). But he ultimately returned for a final season as a grad student in 2019, and he won the team’s Deacon House of Pancakes (DHOP) award for most wipeout blocks. But most importantly, in the months leading to his last year, he got the call he wanted most. “Congratulations, Justin,” Clawson said. “Your teammates have named you a team captain.”

As Herron hung up the phone, he thought about the gut punch he’d felt a year earlier and the good that had come of it. “I really applied that to my life ever since then,” Herron says. “And it’s definitely paid off.”

ON THAT MARCH morning at Kiwanis Park, she feels a push in the back, hears a strange man telling her to be quiet, and then she starts screaming. She screams over and over again, but nobody comes. People are around — she can see 10 or so bystanders in her peripheral vision — but her screams are just faint enough, just far enough off in the distance, that no one moves.

And then she makes eye contact with someone she calls her angel. “People need to know what an amazing person Justin is,” says the woman, who wanted to remain anonymous but agreed to an interview with ESPN to describe Herron’s involvement. “He couldn’t have known if that man had a weapon. He just did it spontaneously. Justin has given me hope for the rest of my life. I love him for it.”

Since she’d retired a few years earlier, the former elementary school teacher had gone for a walk almost every day. She loved her job but it had been long, hard days for 39 years, teaching different grades. She especially enjoyed the last stretch of her career, when she was working with fifth-graders. They were the perfect age group for her — old enough to have real conversations with her, yet still young enough to be kids.

She would often daydream about someday retiring and living a tranquil existence, full of walks and parks. She’d spent most of her past four decades around Tempe, often visiting with her daughter that lives in the area, but sometimes traveling to Texas, where her other daughter works as a doctor. Through it all, she always made sure to get her walks in and built a small community of joggers and dogsitters and fellow park walkers that she would see every day. “Walks were my treat once I stopped teaching,” she says.

That morning, she is already shaken after a disturbing start to her outing: a soccer game on pause as a player in distress lays on the field. First responders frantically try to revive the man as worried teammates crowd around. She can’t hear what they’re saying. She can just feel the fear in the air as the man fights for his life. She cries and says a little prayer for the man, and before she leaves, she breathes a sigh of relief: The man had sat up. He appears to be okay, and he’s loaded into an ambulance and taken away.

A few minutes later, she’s still thinking about the player on the soccer field when a man approaches from behind and attacks her. She doesn’t know how long she screams and fights but it feels like forever. “Time went so slow,” she says now.

That’s when her eyes connect with another man almost a football field away. “I saw her,” Herron says, and his words slow down. “And she saw me. And… I think… I felt like when I got there… we had a moment of eye contact. And then… the situation did de-escalate quickly and then it stopped, right there and then…”

Herron goes silent for a second, and then finally finishes his sentence. “Right after the eye contact,” he says.

Herron remembers making the decision to run, but he doesn’t remember actually running. He is suddenly just there, next to the man, a local homeless man named Kevin Caballero. When he gets to Caballero and puts his giant 8.88-inch hands on him, Herron is able to latch onto him and drive him, hard, into a heap across from the woman. Caballero tries to wobble back to his feet but Herron is making loud noises that he can hardly believe are coming from within him. His voice is guttural and terrifying, even to him. “Don’t move,” Herron yells.

Around that time, Murry Rogers arrives. He’d been preparing for his teen daughter’s birthday party 30 yards away, putting ice in the coolers and hanging balloons, when he hears the screams. “I didn’t think it was what it was,” he says. When he sees Herron in a sprint toward the man, he begins to run, too, and he arrives a few seconds later.

As Herron comforts the woman, Caballero is insisting that she had initiated the assault. (Later, when detectives interview him about the incident, Caballero says he believes the woman telepathically communicated to him and told him that she wanted to have sex. He admits to pushing her down and attempting to sexually assault her.) Herron eventually tells the woman, “You don’t have to listen to this guy anymore,” and they walk out of ear shot from the man as Rogers stands guard with Caballero.

“Don’t let him go,” the woman says over her shoulder to Rogers, who has his hand on Caballero’s shoulder. “Just don’t let him go.” Caballero continues to mumble, mostly incoherently, but he doesn’t move. “I think he just knew, ‘This was going to be way more trouble if I start running from this guy,'” Herron says.

Police arrive within a few minutes and take Caballero away. (He’s ultimately charged with attempted sexual assault and kidnapping. His public defender — who did not respond to calls and emails from ESPN — argued that Caballero had never been convicted of a felony and had been off his mental health medications, and the court agreed to release him to the custody of a relative. The trial is scheduled for sometime this fall.)

Herron does his best to soothe the woman while the detectives interview witnesses and the police cars pull away. She gives Herron and Rogers one more hug each, and then she’s loaded into an ambulance and driven off.

Herron and Rogers watch as she pulls away, and then they’re the only people still there, standing in the park, staring at each other, as people wander past with no idea that a sexual assault had been prevented a half-hour earlier.

“It’s just… over now?” Rogers says to Herron.

“I guess so,” Herron says.

Rogers goes back to setting up his daughter’s birthday party. Guests begin arriving soon after, and Rogers can’t help but sit amongst all the laughing and balloons and presents and think about the way something can happen — something really bad, something really traumatic — but the world just hurtles forward.

As Herron leaves the park, he calls his mom to tell her what happened. “You’re never going to believe this,” he tells her. “I saved this woman from getting raped in the park.”

“What if the guy had had a gun or a knife?” she asks. Herron lies and says that he could tell immediately Caballero didn’t have any weapons. He didn’t know, though. He just knew he had to start running.

A FEW DAYS after the attack, Herron and Rogers were asked if they’d come back to the Tempe town hall for a ceremony to honor them for their good deeds. The woman was notified but not expected to attend.

Herron and Rogers arrived to a crowded hallway of Tempe police commissioners and officers, with media cameras set up outside. The two men were chitchatting with everybody, and football kept coming up. Most of the people there were Cardinals fans, but a Patriots fan or two made sure to remind the room of the significant gap in success between the two franchises. Everybody laughed.

And then the group went quiet. A retired schoolteacher and her daughter turned the corner and began to approach. They walked side-by-side for a bit but then the mom sped a few steps ahead. “I wanted to hug my angels,” she says.

The hug began as a low-speed collision between Herron and the teacher, and they both peeled off one arm apiece to make room for Rogers. All three bowed their heads, and almost no words were exchanged. They just hugged and cried, and pretty soon, all those old grizzled cops were dabbing at their eyes, too.

About a minute later, the small huddle broke, and Herron told Rogers and the woman that he would get them to a Patriots game this fall. “For sure, that is a given,” says Herron, who will be splitting snaps at right tackle as starter Trent Brown deals with a calf injury. “There is no way that isn’t happening. We’ve established a relationship that will never be forgotten. Our paths will definitely cross again in some way shape or form. I don’t know when that is. But it will be a wonderful reunion.”

Now it was time to speak to the media outside. Rogers and Herron waved goodbye, and the woman’s daughter handed them each a thank-you letter she’d written. Herron really wanted to open his but he didn’t have time — he put the note in his pocket and headed for the exit.

But as he got to the doors, he looked back once more at the woman he’d saved. She was watching him the whole time as he walked away, so Herron gave her one final wave and smile. He was surprised — happily surprised — that she came that morning.

The truth is, she had to go. She says in the weeks after the attack, the only visual she had in her mind was the face of her attacker. She needed to stare at Herron and Rogers that morning for as long as she could. “I wanted to take in their faces,” she says. “I didn’t want to only see that man’s face for the rest of my life. And now I can — I only see Justin and Murry now when I think back on it. I will carry their faces forever.”

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Michigan to ‘act swiftly’ if findings warrant firings

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6 hours ago

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December 18, 2025

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Michigan to 'act swiftly' if findings warrant firings

  • Adam RittenbergDec 17, 2025, 07:56 PM ET

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      College football reporter; joined ESPN in 2008. Graduate of Northwestern University.

Michigan’s investigation into its football program and wider athletic department could lead to findings of additional misconduct that might trigger more employment terminations, interim university president Domenico Grasso said Wednesday.

In a video statement, Grasso described the week since football coach Sherrone Moore’s firing as “no doubt a challenging time for our university community.”

Michigan fired Moore on Dec. 10 for engaging in an inappropriate relationship with a staff member, discovered through a university investigation. Moore faces three criminal charges, including felony third-degree home invasion, for allegedly confronting the staff member at her residence after being fired.

Michigan’s investigation into Moore’s conduct and the football program continues, and the university commissioned Chicago-based law firm Jenner & Block to conduct a larger review of the athletic department culture, conduct and procedures following a series of scandals.

“We will take whatever steps are necessary to ensure that conduct like this does not happen again,” said Grasso, who took over as interim president in May and will step down when a permanent president is installed. “Make no mistake. We will leave no stone unturned, and any further action we take will be based on credible evidence and findings, developed through a rigorous investigation.

“If the university learns of information through this investigation or otherwise that warrants a termination of any employee, we will act swiftly, just as we did in the case of Coach Moore.”

Grasso encouraged those who have information regarding misconduct within the football program or athletic department to contact Jenner & Block.

“Our focus is strictly on uncovering the facts,” Grasso said. “It is my job, my duty, to ensure the integrity of this investigation.”

Grasso also briefly addressed Michigan’s search for its next football coach. Athletic director Warde Manuel, who has led the department since 2016, has not publicly addressed the search, which he is expected to lead.

Biff Poggi, a Michigan staff member under both Moore and predecessor Jim Harbaugh, is serving as interim head coach for Michigan’s upcoming Cheez-It Citrus Bowl matchup against Texas on Dec. 31.

“We will hire an individual who is of the highest moral character and who will serve as a role model and a respected leader for the entire football program,” Grasso said. “And who will, with dignity and integrity, be a fierce competitor.”

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Sources: FSG to sell Penguins to Hoffmann family

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12 hours ago

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December 17, 2025

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Sources: FSG to sell Penguins to Hoffmann family

Fenway Sports Group has agreed in principle to a sale of the Pittsburgh Penguins to the Chicago-based Hoffmann family, sources confirmed to ESPN. The deal is pending approval by the NHL’s Board of Governors.

While the exact sale price was not immediately confirmed, league sources expect the deal to land between $1.7 and $1.8 billion for the Penguins. FSG bought controlling interest of the Penguins in 2021 for $900 million.

Hockey journalist Frank Seravalli was the first to report on Fenway’s agreement to sell.

The Penguins were previously owned by Ron Burkle and franchise legend Mario Lemieux, who had bought the team and saved it from bankruptcy in 1999. That group helped keep the Penguins in Pittsburgh, then the club went on to win three Stanley Cups from 2009 to 2017 with its current core player group of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang. Lemieux has remained involved with the team after the sale to Fenway and his role with the new ownership group remains to be seen.

FSG’s portfolio includes several sports properties, such as Liverpool of the EPL, the Boston Red Sox of MLB, Fenway Park, NESN, RFK Racing of NASCAR and Boston Common Golf of TGL. In January, ESPN reported that Fenway was taking the Penguins to market to explore selling a minority stake — which is increasingly a common practice as NHL valuations continue to increase. Hoffmann has been in discussions with the Penguins since at least this summer, sources told ESPN.

The Hoffmann Family of Companies is a multi-generational family-owned private equity firm, whose CEO is billionaire David Hoffmann. Their broad portfolio includes more than 100 brands in real estate, manufacturing, media and agriculture among other sectors.

The group also owns the ECHL Florida Everblades, and David Hoffmann said publicly in recent years he wishes to own either an NHL or NBA franchise.

The NHL’s BOG is not scheduled to meet again until June after convening last week in Colorado Springs. However, the NHL could call a BOG meeting to vote on the sale earlier.

The Penguins have missed the playoffs in each of the past three seasons as GM Kyle Dubas embarks on a rebuild. Crosby, 37, remains one of the game’s most complete players and biggest draws; the Canadian captain has re-affirmed his commitment to Pittsburgh several times in recent years. Crosby’s current contract expires at the end of next season. Malkin, 39, is on the final year of his contract.

One of the biggest business decisions for a new owner would be how to handle the regional sports channel that broadcasts Penguins games locally. FSG and the Pittsburgh Pirates co-own and operate the current provider, Sportsnet Pittsburgh.

According Sportico’s report in October, the average NHL franchise is now worth an estimated $2.1 billion. That’s a 17 percent increase in one year and more than a 100 percent increase from 2022. The NHL projects that revenue for this season will be about $6.8 billion, commissioner Gary Bettman said last week .

After their 633-game sellout streak ended in 2021, the Penguins have seen decreased attendance in each of the past three seasons.

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Geek and destroy: How Bruins winger Morgan Geekie has defied goal-scoring regression

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12 hours ago

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December 17, 2025

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Geek and destroy: How Bruins winger Morgan Geekie has defied goal-scoring regression

  • Greg WyshynskiDec 17, 2025, 07:00 AM ET

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      Greg Wyshynski is ESPN’s senior NHL writer.

Boston Bruins forward Morgan Geekie can finish a Rubik’s Cube in under a minute.

“I mean, right now I’d be pretty rusty,” he said. “I’m not insane, like those kids that you see on TV, but I’m pretty good at them.”

When Geekie was around 10 years old, a cousin taught him how to speed solve the puzzle. While some have never found a way to line up that mosaic of colors despite years of trying, Geekie said it’s doable once one cracks the code. One summer at their lake cottage, his cousin wrote down its patterns. Geekie spent two weeks memorizing them and working out solutions while fiddling with the cube.

“It’s basically just all algorithms. You just do the same moves all the time once you get the pieces in the right spot. Once you do that, I mean, it’s pretty cut and dry. Everything goes in order,” he said. “I haven’t really forgot. It’s just one of those things that once you know it, you know it.”

Perhaps Geekie just knows how to score goals now, too.

That’s the simplest rationalization for the 27-year-old’s unexpected transformation into one of the NHL’s premier goal scorers. Through 34 games, Geekie is second in the NHL with 24 goals, trailing only the dominant Nathan MacKinnon of the Colorado Avalanche (28). Going back to the start of last season, Geekie is tied for 11th in goals scored (57).

Geekie scored 33 goals in 2024-25, which is 16 more than his previous career high set two years ago with the Bruins. He shot 22%, which obliterated his previous career best of 13.1% set in 2023-24.

There’s always an offensive player whose unexpected scoring surge in one season makes him the consensus choice for regression the following season. Entering this season, that player was Geekie.

He was the first player listed on ESPN’s rundown of regression candidates, with the expectation that he would top out at 26 goals. Sports Illustrated did the same thing, writing that his “offensive numbers are set to dip next season.” Daily Faceoff wrote that Geekie’s shooting percentage was “a strong indication that his performance isn’t sustainable, at least at this level” for the Bruins.

Geekie gets it. He called the predictions “a fair statement” given that he was scoring less than 10 goals in a season with the Seattle Kraken just a few seasons ago.

“I see it all. It’s an easy cherry to pick to be like, ‘Obviously he’s shooting 22%, it’s going to go down.’ It didn’t bother me at all,” Geekie said.

Rather than regress, Geekie has progressed this season. Through 34 games, he is shooting 28.2%.

“I mean, it’s got to go down at some point,” he said, with a laugh. “Like I said, I don’t really pay attention to that and I’m not somebody that has 10 shots a game, so I just try to make the most of my opportunities when I get the puck.”

GEEKIE IS AMUSED by the focus on his shooting percentage, because he feels there are easy explanations for it. The first is that he doesn’t believe he shoots the puck all that much. Over the past two seasons, David Pastrnak averaged 3.79 shots per game in 110 games. Geekie averaged 2.11 in that same span. Only Sidney Crosby (2.45 shots per game) has a lower average than Geekie (2.48) among the top 10 goal-scorers this season.

“I feel like I’m a big quality over quantity person,” he said.

His first season in Boston, coach Jim Montgomery stressed the need for Geekie to get chances from deep inside the attacking zone.

“I think a high-danger chance is better than just shooting it from the wall. That’s kind of the mentality that I’ve had always. I’m not trying to waste shots that aren’t good for anybody,” Geekie said. “Unless I’m trying to create something off it, I’m honestly not trying to put it on net. Maybe that’s why I end up where I end up.”

Pastrnak recently said the Bruins were reminding Geekie to shoot the puck more often. In fairness, Geekie is shooting more this season. Pastrnak said Geekie is “definitely trying to be a little more selfish to take them” when he fights into high-danger areas of the ice. But Geekie acknowledged there are sometimes philosophical differences between his striving for quality over his team’s desire for quantity.

“I think it’s a push and pull,” he said. “It’s like, I don’t think I need to be shooting this, but other people think that it still gives us an opportunity to create a chance. So I just try to keep that in mind when I have the puck”

This is Geekie’s seventh season in the NHL. He was selected by the Carolina Hurricanes with the 67th pick in the 2017 draft as a goal-scoring forward with the WHL Tri-City Americans. His first two seasons as a pro were mostly spent in the AHL with the Charlotte Checkers, before playing 36 games with the Hurricanes in 2020-21.

That summer, the Seattle Kraken held their expansion draft as the NHL’s newest team. Geekie was left off Carolina’s protected list. At the time, it wasn’t expected that former Hurricanes GM Ron Francis would select him for the Kraken, with options like defenseman Jake Bean and forward Nino Niederreiter available from Carolina. But Geekie was the choice, a player whom Francis had drafted while with the Canes.

Geekie had 22 points in 73 games in his first season in Seattle, skating 12:36 per game with just seven goals. His second campaign saw him jump to 28 points in 69 games, but with even less ice time (10:27).

He was a restricted free agent after the 2022-23 season. Francis attempted to re-sign him before the deadline for submitting qualifying offers, but Geekie and his representatives declined it. The two sides couldn’t find common ground. Rather than go to arbitration, where the Kraken weren’t keen on Geekie potentially setting the terms of his next deal, they chose not to qualify him, making him an unrestricted free agent.

“With Morgan, we did make what I felt was a pretty fair offer,” Francis said at the time, via Sound of Hockey. “It didn’t work out, and he has the right once we don’t qualify him to go elsewhere.”

And so he went to Boston, signing a two-year deal worth $4 million in total.

While he wasn’t seeing much time with the Kraken, Geekie felt he was improving as a player. He said a “integral part” of that development was thanks to Jonathan Sigalet, a skills coach who improved all facets of his game.

“When I first started working with him, he was adamant that he wasn’t going to try and make me play like I’m on the first line,” Geekie recalled. “He said, ‘We both know that trying to do things that you do on the first line on the fourth line is going to get you in the press box.'”

He said working with Siglet slowed the game down for him. He started to see the game differently. He began to see “little tendencies” that all of the NHL’s good players share. Geekie also appreciated having a “third party” assessment for his play, apart from that of his coaches and his own.

Geekie was immediately given an opportunity to thrive in Boston in 2023-24, playing 15:21 in his first game with the Bruins. He ended up averaging 15:25 per game, with 17 goals and 22 assists in 76 games. He earned time with Pastrnak and Pavel Zacha on the Bruins’ top line.

His follow-up season didn’t start well. Geekie scored one goal in his first 17 games and was a healthy scratch early in the season. Some trade whispers started about him as a pending restricted free agent. He had eight goals by the end of the 2024 calendar year.

How did he end up with 33 of them? With one of the greatest goal-scoring heaters this side of Alex Ovechkin: Geekie scored 14 goals in his last 20 games of the season. His chemistry with Pastrnak was undeniable — the Bruins scoring ace assisted on 21 of Geekie’s 33 goals last season.

Geekie expressed a desire to stay with the Bruins. The feeling was mutual, as GM Don Sweeney in June handed him a six-year, $33 million contract for a team-friendly $5.5 million annual cap hit.

WHEN GEEKIE SIGNED his new contract, he decided he wanted to join in the tradition of NHL players celebrating a windfall with their teammates. It’s usually a dinner or something of that nature.

But Geekie wanted to do something different.

“Everybody’s eating at the same restaurants in every city. And I’m sure they’d remember it for a little while, but I think it would be just one of those things like, ‘Hey, thanks for dinner.’ So I wanted to do something a little more nostalgic,” he said.

Geekie is a huge baseball fan who played competitively until his late teens. He was in the process of designing a personalized baseball glove for himself through a company called 44 Pro Custom Gloves when his wife, Emma, suggested that he design ones for all of his teammates as a gift.

Geekie started the process in July, sketching out what he wanted on the gloves for 30 teammates — including players that were on the bubble for the Bruins’ roster this season. He had the biographical information for them, from their birth cities and countries to their schools to where they played junior hockey.

“Honestly, for probably three weeks, I just sat in front of my TV watching baseball and I would just draft gloves up. I thought it was so fun,” Geekie said. “My wife got sick of me for a little while.”

He would FaceTime his brother Noah, a coach at Okotoks Dawgs Academy in Alberta, to bounce the designs off him and get input. He was cognizant of having the designs as unique as possible, despite some of the school colors being similar for his teammates.

Before a practice in October, Geekie delivered the gloves to the locker room stalls of his teammates. It went over well.

“Baseball is not that big in Sweden, but it’s obviously cool to have,” center Elias Lindholm told the Bruins website, having received a glove with a Swedish flag on it. “Hopefully, when my kids get a little bit older, we can play a little game or something. For now, it is just going to be at home, resting.”

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Morgan Geekie nets goal for Bruins

Morgan Geekie nets goal for Bruins

While the gloves were a chance to celebrate with his teammates, there weren’t many celebrations anticipated for Boston this season. The Bruins were trading players away at last season’s trade deadline, sending mainstays like captain Brad Marchand (Florida), center Charlie Coyle (Colorado) and defenseman Brandon Carlo (Toronto) elsewhere. They had an incoming first-year coach in Marco Sturm. At best, it was supposed to be a transition year for the Bruins.

But through 34 games, Boston is second in the Atlantic Division with a 20-14-0 record, within a point of division-leading Detroit in the crowded Eastern Conference.

Many around the NHL were surprised. Geekie wasn’t.

“We underperformed. Last season was like the perfect storm of bad events with our kind of discombobulated training camp and then having a coaching change and just kind of everything that could have went wrong went wrong,” Geekie said. “The core group we have is just too good to be written off. But I understand why people had doubts about us.”

But defying doubts is what Morgan Geekie’s all about, whether it’s his team’s predicted finish in the standings or his own predicted regression as a scorer.

“He has everything to score 50 in this league,” Pastrnak said. “He has a heck of a shot. He has the goal-scoring instincts. He is going to get it one day.”

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