The Boston Bruins will head west to sunny California this week for their road trip to take on the Anaheim Ducks, Los Angeles Kings and San Jose Sharks. The team recently saw their seven-point winning streak come to an end thanks to a 5-3 loss to the Ottawa Senators on November 13. But scored a 3–2 win over the Montreal Canadiens on November 15, moving the team into first place in the Atlantic Division.
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This is the Bruins’ second road trip west this season, and their last didn’t go so well. In early October, the team lost to the Vegas Golden Knights (6 – 5), Colorado Avalanche (4 – 1) and the Utah Mammoth (3 – 2). The losses came in the midst of a six-game losing streak that at one point left the team near the bottom of the standings.
This road trip comes at an important point in the 2025-2026 season, as we get closer to the American Thanksgiving, the point where you can generally draw conclusions about which teams are good, bad and ugly. If a team is in a playoff spot at the end of November, the general rule of thumb is that they will be in a playoff spot when the season ends in April. With things close to the Atlantic again this season, the Bruins can’t afford to make another winless trip west.
Tough competition in California
The Bruins have had some solid wins so far this season, especially during their recent seven-game win streak in which they defeated the Senators and the Carolina Hurricanes (currently second in the Metropolitan Division). But all three California teams will be tough opponents and pull off big wins if they succeed.
After floundering at the bottom of the rankings for the past few seasons, the Anaheim Ducks have returned with a vengeance in 2025-2026. They currently sit second in the Pacific Division with a record of 11 – 6 – 1, having already defeated the Bruins when they came east in October, 7 – 5. In the last game, Mikael Granlund scored a career-high five points, and Nikita Nesterenko had four points.
The Ducks are a young and exciting team that has started the season strong. Leo Carlsson just became the youngest player to reach 100 career points in the franchise historyand he has done a lot to help the team move forward. The Bruins defense will be a tough task to contain, while Cutter Gauthier and the always dangerous Troy Terry will be other guys to keep an eye on.
After playing in Anaheim, the Bruins will fly to Los Angeles to take on the Kings, who are currently in first place in the Pacific. Their captain, Anze Kopitar, will play his final NHL season in 2025-2026, and it has clearly lit a fire under the team to be competitive in the old player’s final season. They defeated Boston 7-2 last March when the team was last in LA. Fortunately for the Bruins, they are a much better team now than they were at the end of last season.
They wrap up the California road trip against the San Jose Sharks. While they may have the worst record of the three teams at 8 – 8 – 3, they are a team that has been on the rise in recent weeks, recently riding a four-game win streak with victories against the Seattle Kraken, Winnipeg Jets, Florida Panthers and Minnesota Wild. Macklin Celebrini is currently third in points among NHL skaters, behind only Nathan MacKinnon and Connor McDavid. This game, which comes at the end of the road trip, might secretly be the most difficult of the three.
Bruins cannot be winless in West again
The Bruins’ western road trip last month was a complete momentum stopper for the team early in the season. The scoring dried up from the top six outside David Pastrnak, and they went from allowing just five goals through their first three games of the season to conceding thirteen during their winless three-game road trip. The defense completely collapsed and that continued in the next two games after coming home to Boston.
It is currently very tight in the Atlantic Ocean, with only eight points separating first and last place. Another winless road trip out west could easily drop the Bruins down the standings.
However, the most important thing is the timing of this trip. When they leave California, the Bruins are 24 games into the season, a quarter of the way through with the American Thanksgiving just a few days away. It’s time to start evaluating and questioning who this team is and, realistically, what their ceiling is in 2025-2026. This is another fun team to watch, and one that is capable of going up against the best players in the league. But it can also be a streaky team. So far this season, they started off on a three-game win streak before losing six in a row. They then had a seven-game winning streak, which came to an end last week. If we turn around now and continue another long losing streak, it would say a lot about who this team is, and that wouldn’t be a good thing.
The trade deadline may still be several months away, but American Thanksgiving is the time to start asking the tough questions. Is this a team that should prepare to be a buyer at the deadline, bring in another defenseman or center and try to make a real run in the postseason? Or should they stay patient and let whatever happens happen, which would most likely be a season where they would make the playoffs but probably not get particularly far. Or if they lose all their games in California and continue to play this streaky brand of hockey, will they become sellers again, albeit probably more subdued than last season?
One three-game swing through California won’t make or break the season, but it can certainly reveal a lot and could be something that can be considered a turning point when evaluating the team at the end of the 2025-26 season. Losing is never great, but another winless western road trip at this particular point in the season would be particularly bad.
Bruins can win tough games
The Bruins have shown they can take on tough opponents in recent weeks, so even though they face three challenging teams this week in California, there’s no reason to think the team can’t get at least one win. They just beat the Canadians, who took first place on the Atlantic Ocean. They beat the Avalanche a few weeks ago, who are arguably the best team in the league right now.
Related: 3 Bruins’ Takeaways from Six-Game Win Streak
After a disastrous 2024-25 season, the Bruins are turning something around in 2025-26. What exactly that is remains to be seen, but this is certainly a much better team than many people thought this season.
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