Bruins’ David Pastrnak deserves more love as an NHL superstar

The Boston Bruins and Buffalo Sabres are tied 1-1 heading into Game 3 of their first-round series in the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs.

While we saw some great back-and-forth in the first two contests in Buffalo, it was Bruins’ forward David Pastrnak who stepped up for Boston, as he recorded one goal and four assists for five points in that span. This follows a 2025-26 regular season that saw Pastrnak finished with 29 goals and a career-high 71 assists for 100 points, his fourth consecutive 100-point campaign.

On Wednesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Tyler Yaremchuk and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton discuss the Bruins-Sabres series and how Pastrnak has elevated his game to be among the league’s best.

Tyler Yaremchuk: I think a big thing in this Bruins-Sabres series is the five points in two games for David Pastrnak, who again is talked about as a superstar in this league, but he never really gets thrown into the conversation. Everyone kind of goes, “Oh it’s Connor  McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Nikita Kucherov, Nathan MacKinnon, that’s the top tier.” But over the last three regular seasons, Pastrnak is fourth in the NHL in scoring, right in between McDavid and Draisaitl.

Pastrnak is a guy who, again, he does deserve credit, and people don’t forget about him. That’s not the right way to phrase this. But a lot of times, he doesn’t get put into that 1A tier, he gets put into that 1B tier, but I think he’s shown us that he deserves to be in that 1A, bonafide faces of the league, kind of tier.

Carter Hutton: I agree with that, too. I think his coming-out-party that we’ve seen in the playoffs, and expectations are always on certain guys, but this is kind of the stage where you can get it done. The storylines are just going to continue to build, right? I think it’s kind of a great question, because after each series, we could reflect and be like “who was that impact difference-maker outside of the household names? Because that’s how you win Stanley Cups: you have guys step up.

You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…