BRIGHTON – It was clear that Thursday’s practice day for the Boston Bruins was all about 19-year-old James Hagens.
The seventh overall pick in the 2025 NHL Draft made his B’s practice debut and got his dressing room stall in the far corner opposite the entrance of Boston’s locker room at Warrior Ice Arena. It was a childhood dream achieved after reporting to the Providence Bruins for a handful of AHL games, where he was good, but not dominant, and posted just two 5-on-5 points in six American League games.
It was perhaps a wee bit surprising that Hagens was signed, given that he wasn’t a dominant force at the AHL level after reporting there from Boston College, but the timing made sense in terms of assimilating Hagens into Boston’s way of doing things given that they had a break in the game schedule until this weekend’s Saturday matinee against the Tampa Bay Lightning.
“This is a dream come true for me, something I grew up my whole life dreaming of, and to be able to be here, part of an NHL organization, it’s a really special moment,” said Hagens after signing his three-year entry-level deal with an AAV of $975,000 that begins with this season. “I just [want to] stay where your feet are, take it day by day. There’s no need to look ahead or anything like that. Just be in the moment, learn where all the doors open to and learn where everything goes. That’s first, so it’s just stay in the moment.”
As far as the nuts and bolts of it go, Marco Sturm made no guarantees about when Hagens would get into the lineup this weekend, and said he would 100 percent not be playing in Saturday’s matinee against Tampa. The most likely scenario is that Hagens isn’t going to suit up for the Black and Gold until they’ve clinched a postseason spot, and therefore, some of the pressure will be off in terms of the teenager getting his feet wet at the NHL level.
“He just needs time to get used to our system,” said Sturm. “He’s on the right track.”
Either way, it will be exciting to get the youngster’s speed and skill into the lineup and see what he can do with NHL-level players, as he’s just scratching the surface of his vast potential.
“Obviously [he’s a] very high-skilled, good on the power play,” said Sturm. “Structure-wise, that’s something that the details in the structure, he had to be aware of, and so he was focusing on that [at the AHL level]. I asked him about it, said, yeah, no, it was faster too, so it was a big jump for him (in Providence).
“But feedback was good. He did overall a good job. Still obviously needs to learn a lot of things, but that’s more structure-wise than anything else.”
But it was also very clear that Hagens isn’t going to be playing any center during this late-season stint with the Black and Gold, and that instead he will focus on the wing as he did for Providence, and for the Eagles in the second half of his collegiate season. The clear message from the Bruins’ head coach after Thursday’s skate was that Boston isn’t going to put Hagens into situations that he
