Geekie finding happiness, possibly long-term home with Bruins

BOSTON -- Morgan Geekie came into the season with hope.

It was his second season with the Boston Bruins, a place he had come to appreciate while having a career-best season in 2023-24, a place he felt settled. He had had a good summer, readying himself for a season in which he would be a restricted free agent at the end. He made it through training camp unscathed.

Then came the season opener. The Bruins were in Florida, a hurricane bearing down on the state at the same time the Florida Panthers were set to raise the banner on their Stanley Cup championship. This was a team that had bedeviled the Bruins, knocking them out of the Stanley Cup Playoffs in each of the past two years.

Geekie was ready. Until he wasn't.

"It was the first game against Florida, I had a chance with [8:01] left and I hit the crossbar," he said. "Obviously with the history with Florida and everything, I think mentally it was just, like, 'Oh, it's going to be one of these kinds of years.'

"It was a very quick assumption by me, but it just seemed to wear on me for a while. That's just how it went for the first quarter of the season. I lost it for a bit."

It would take until the 12th game of the season for Geekie to score, the 19th for him to score again, and he was scratched five times in the team’s first 16 games. On Dec. 12, after 26 games, Geekie had nine points (four goals, five assists) as he and the Bruins faltered game after game after game.

His confidence was low. His production was lower. His contract status rippled through his brain, the memory of finding out that he had not been qualified by his last team, the Seattle Kraken, on X (formerly known as Twitter) still rankling him. Normally quick to let it all roll off his back, Geekie felt the weight stick around this time.

"I think it all snowballed," he said. "I think I let it get to me pretty quickly."

But in the 42 games since, Geekie has 32 points (22 goals, 10 assists). He has set an NHL career-high with 26 goals, nine more than his previous best from last season, and set his NHL best with 41 points with nine games remaining, starting against the Detroit Red Wings at Little Caesars Arena on Saturday (8 p.m. ET; ABC, ESPN+).

"Before, he didn't have his game where it needed to be," Bruins coach Joe Sacco said. "And he'd probably be the first to tell you that. … To find your game and to find your footing, it's difficult. People always talk about confidence in this game. Well, confidence is fleeting. It doesn't matter if you're 35, have been in the League for 15 years, or you're 25.

"The way you build confidence is by being assertive, you take charge, you're making sure that your preparation is good. … If you're prepared when the opportunity comes, you've done your work, you have a chance now to grab ahold of that and that's what he's done."

He suddenly is in line to be part of whatever comes next for the Bruins, whatever the future holds for a team that shed five major pieces ahead of the NHL Trade Deadline on March 7, but which held on to Geekie.

"He's done a great job obviously," general manager Don Sweeney said after the Deadline. "He's earned more opportunity now. He's riding shotgun in a very productive line, and he's taken advantage of it. It's great on him."

Geekie has gotten perhaps his best professional opportunity this season, a chance to play alongside David Pastrnak and Pavel Zacha on a line whose chemistry has grown as the season has progressed.

But even with those linemates, success was not a given.

For Geekie, it never has been.

Raised in tiny Strathclair, Manitoba, a three-hour drive west of Winnipeg, the 26-year-old forward was the oldest of three boys in an athletic family. Middle brother Noah, 24, focused on baseball, while their youngest brother, Conor Geekie, 20, was selected by the Arizona Coyotes with the No. 11 pick of the 2022 NHL Draft and has split this season between the Tampa Bay Lightning (49 games) and Syracuse of the American Hockey League.

Morgan was coached by his father or his future father-in-law until he was around 15, playing years of his childhood on a team with his future wife, Emma.

"It was small enough to where high school sports, and basically all sports, if everybody didn't play, there was no team," Noah Geekie said. "So you had to play it all."

But the NHL? That was far from a guarantee.

"I always knew he was skilled," Noah said. "He was a bit of a late bloomer, I would say. He wasn't the biggest kid, especially in 15-U and 18-U, even his first couple of games in the WHL. He didn't really hit his growth spurt until his first or second year in the WHL.

"He was never the best skater until he started to work on that as a pro, but he has a really high IQ and good hockey sense and can really shoot it as well, and can see the ice."

It wasn't until 2016-17, Morgan's NHL draft season, that Noah thought a future in hockey could become a reality. Morgan had 90 points (35 goals, 55 assists) in 72 games with Tri-City of the Western Hockey League, and the Carolina Hurricanes selected him in the third round (No. 67) at the 2017 NHL Draft.

“It was like ... he could actually do this thing," Noah said.

The path, though, wasn't smooth. Geekie made his NHL debut for the Hurricanes in 2019-20, then played 36 of 56 games in the COVID-shortened 2020-21 season. He played for now-San Jose Sharks coach Ryan Warsofsky with Charlotte of the American Hockey League during those seasons, and as Warsofsky said, he had a long way to go.

"He can shoot it," Warsofsky said. "He's got a knack to score goals. He's obviously having a career year right now. He's really worked on his skating and his strength. When we got him to Charlotte, he was a skinny, scrawny, tall kid, and now he's put on some size (6-foot-3, 208 pounds). He's figured out his role in the National Hockey League. He's got a deadly shot, so when he's in a scoring area, he can rip it like the best of them."

Still, there was uncertainty ahead. He was chosen by the Kraken in the 2021 NHL Expansion Draft, and was there for two seasons before it all ended in that surprising and dispiriting way. He signed a two-year, $2 million contract ($1 million average annual value) with the Bruins on July 1, 2023.

Boston felt like a balm. It was a place where he could, if all went right, show off the potential he believed he had, the late development that had characterized his career so far, where he could take the chip on his shoulder and make it work to his advantage.

"You're proving to yourself that you still belong," he said.

And it was all going so well, until the pucks stopped going in and his confidence dipped and the benchings started. But he found his way through.

Boston has been good for Geekie, good for his wife and almost 2-year-old daughter. It has been good for his career. And it is the first of his three NHL teams that has felt like a family.

He would love to stay, love to remain in a place that has worked out for his career. For now, though, he's not feeling overly stressed. He's taking it in stride, knowing what he's shown and believing he has even more ahead.

"Can he continue to expand his game and be one of the building blocks and core pieces moving forward?" Sweeney said. "That's what we're going to try and find out this summer. … He's identified, this is a place that he wants to play and we've got work to do to find a contract and that's what we'll do. I believe we'll get one done."

Noah, for one, believes there is so much more that Morgan can be, so much more that he has to show. He's seen Morgan stay level-headed, find his confidence and his groove this season, and then find his game.

"What I think people who watch him should realize is, to me, he still hasn't hit his ceiling," Noah said. "If you look at his years as a player, he's gotten better every single year. I think it's just going to keep going up. It's awesome to see."