Geekie emerges as unlikely offensive force for Bruins

BOSTON -- Pat Falloon knew where his broken sticks were going, knew what Craig Geekie was doing when he slipped the discarded pieces of equipment out of the trash can. He knew that they would have a new owner, a new purpose, a second life.

What Falloon didn’t know was what those sticks would mean for Morgan Geekie.

He didn’t know that those sticks, and the shot they would produce, would end up leading the NHL in goals.

It was back in the early 2000s, around 2003 or 2004, when Falloon -- the veteran of 575 NHL games with the San Jose Sharks, Philadelphia Flyers, Ottawa Senators, Edmonton Oilers and Pittsburgh Penguins -- joined Craig Geekie on a senior team, the Foxwarren Falcons in the North Central Hockey League in Manitoba.

Craig Geekie, who had two (soon to be three) young boys, was a lefty, and his oldest, Morgan, was a righty, so his hand-me-downs were useless. But Falloon was a righty and, “being the cheap dad I am,” Craig figured he could be resourceful and recycle those sticks, cutting them down to fit the kindergarten-aged Morgan.

“Any chance he got for sticks, he took them,” Falloon said, of the Sherwood 7000 FeatherLite with an 80 flex and 4.5 lie he used at the time.

He didn’t mind. He and Craig had known each other forever, had grown up playing hockey and baseball against each other out in the small towns in Manitoba. They came back together after Falloon’s NHL career -- which was where Craig saw his opportunity.

“Patty’s stick, it was a good curve, it was a good lie for him, it just happened to be a nice match, but it also happened to be wood,” Craig recalled. “I would literally take it out of the garbage and cut it and say, ‘Here you go, here’s your new stick.’”

Though Morgan Geekie has left the wooden sticks behind -- he used them well after many of his peers -- there are remnants in his game of the big wooden paddles he was using as a tot, remnants of the Falloon sticks in the way he shoots now, in the NHL with the Boston Bruins, after using such a straight curve for such a long time.

“It teaches you a lot,” said Morgan, who will be in the national spotlight on Friday when the Bruins host the New York Rangers in the NHL Thanksgiving Showdown (1 p.m. ET; HBO MAX, TNT, SN). “I personally don’t think I would have as good of a shot if it wasn’t for learning to do that.”

* * * *

The stat continues to be eye-popping and, for Morgan Geekie, perhaps a little hard to wrap his head around: Over the past year, since Nov. 27, 2024, the top three players in the NHL in goals scored are Edmonton Oilers forward Leon Draisaitl (50), Geekie (49) and Bruins forward David Pastrnak (46).

“It’s weird,” Morgan said.

It’s becoming less so. Though last season started out rough, with the forward being healthy scratched a handful of times, he ended up scoring 33 goals, nearly double his previous high of 17 from 2023-24. It could have been written off as a fluke. But, with Geekie second in the NHL with 17 goals in 25 games this season, it’s much harder to do so now.

He has taken off, his always-impressive shot meeting a situation in which Geekie has been given the ice time and the confidence and the linemates to shine.

“It’s weird because those people are still so far above me, it’s weird to see your name up there,” Geekie said of Draisaitl and Pastrnak, with whom he played on a dynamic line at the end of last season and the start of this season. “It’s obviously an accomplishment you’ll look back on, like, oh, that was pretty cool. But I mean, just, I don’t know. Those are household names. You feel out of place, almost.”

The production has necessitated a shift in mentality from Geekie, a change in approach, a reevaluation of his place in the hockey ecosystem less than three years after the Seattle Kraken declined to extend a qualifying offer to him. He was on his second NHL team at that point, after the Carolina Hurricanes left him unprotected in the 2021 NHL Expansion Draft.

He had not yet found his footing. But Bruins general manager Don Sweeney believed he saw something in Geekie, believed there was something more in him in the summer of 2023, when he was out there on the open market.

As Sweeney said on July 1, 2023, after Boston signed Geekie, “Could he get into an elevated position and produce more? Could he still have that high-end production 5-on-5? He's played bumper on the power play; he has a really good release as a right shot.”

Sweeney was right. Geekie has been all the Bruins could have hoped for, and so much more.

So much more that Pastrnak, who himself has topped 50 goals once, when he scored 61 in 2022-23, believes that Geekie is capable of getting to that mark, saying earlier this season that he has “everything to score 50 in this league.”

* * * *

Bruins assistant coach Jay Leach acknowledges that, sometimes, when players sign major contracts, like the six-year, $33 million deal ($5.5 million average annual value) that Geekie signed on June 29, there’s a natural letting down of their guard, a foot off the gas pedal that occurs.

Not with Geekie.

“Morgan is the complete opposite of that,” said Leach, who has coached Geekie with both the Kraken and the Bruins. “He works and has honed his craft. He came back to training camp and, I’m telling you, every scout and coach in there was like, ‘He looks faster.’

“So that tells you everything you really need to know about ‘Geeks,’ is you sign a well-deserved long-term deal and you have a choice: Are you going to kind of rest a little bit and enjoy what you’ve done? Or are you going to try to prove to people that I’m worth it and then some?”

Leach has a unique perspective on Geekie, having coached him in 2021-22, the Kraken’s inaugural season, when he scored 22 points (seven goals, 15 assists) in 73 games as a fourth-liner with a “needs improvement” on skating. It was, as Leach put it, a disaster, for everyone.

“I give him a lot of credit,” Leach said. “You certainly knew he had a hard shot, but I think any one of us would be lying to you if they didn’t say, ‘Hey, you’re going to be a third-, fourth-line winger, checker.’ … [What he’s done since is] a testament to him with his work ethic and his belief in his ability.”

Though he fully admits that he didn’t think Geekie was on a path to becoming a 40-plus goal-scorer, he thinks Geekie himself believed, remembering back to some of the skates he had with him as an extra forward in Seattle.

“I can tell you that deep down, he thought that,” Leach said. “He had belief in that. I really think he believed in his shot.”

* * * *

It was just over a week ago, when the Bruins were playing the Anaheim Ducks in California, that Craig Geekie and Falloon were texting about Morgan, about what he’s doing this season, about those sticks.

“I love watching him,” Falloon said. “It’s awesome. It’s not only the stick -- the kid has done excellent. His whole game is incredible. Hand-eye, he’s so good, even on the boards, getting loose pucks. I think it’s more of an upbringing with his brothers and his dad, but I remember Geeks taking those sticks.”

He would use wooden sticks, either those cut down from Falloon or those bought at the store, until he went to the Brick Invitational Hockey Tournament in Edmonton around 11 or 12 years old as a “this little rural kid” from the town of Strathclair, Manitoba, home to about 150 people.

“It was all the city kids and me and another buddy, and they all had the really cool sticks that you see on TV, and I brought my five wood sticks and they’re straight and I taped them up,” Geekie said. “My parents gave me a present for making the team, and it was a composite stick and it was nothing special, but I wasn’t allowed to use it till the tournament was over.”

Craig Geekie laughed long and hard when he heard this version of events, while confirming its truth, adding that when Morgan broke his last wooden stick in the tournament, they had to run to the West Edmonton Mall to get him a backup, a tough pill to swallow, given the prices.

“I can remember him scowling at Mom and Dad because he was still using a wooden stick -- it wasn’t Patty’s -- but it was a wooden stick in the Brick tournament,” Craig Geekie said. “We just kind of accepted the fact that we can’t keep him in wooden sticks all his life.”

Still, he thinks that made a difference in developing his shot, with the hard work needed, the wrist strength needed, to maneuver a wooden stick. Add in the fact that Craig Geekie wouldn’t let his son take a slap shot until he believed he had mastered and could control his wrist shot -- which turned out to be in U-18 hockey -- and that was the recipe for a shot that has connected 17 times this season.

Morgan, of course, managed to get his revenge.

“I never really had insight on how to shoot -- my dad taught me how to shoot,” Geekie said. “He was a defenseman, so he thinks he can shoot, but he can’t.”

Whatever the ingredients -- including the family motto of “You need to work your [expletive] off,” according to Craig -- Morgan has found a success far beyond what most could have expected in those years in Carolina, those years in Seattle.

He is at the top of a list of household names, of bona fide goal-scorers, rapidly proving that his own name belongs there just as much, even if he still can’t quite wrap his brain around it.

None of them can.

“That’s the stuff for us as a family that is surreal,” Craig Geekie said. “That’s the stuff that kind of gets us going, ‘Holy [expletive], this is pretty good.’ Draisaitl is one of a kind. [Connor] McDavid. To be in the conversation is surreal.”