Bruins’ Mason Lohrei made a big decision when he was 15. Maybe his best

In 2016-17, Sam Ballard was the first defenseman on the Culver Military Academy’s Under-16 team to hurt his collarbone. Shortly after, another defenseman, Declan Carlile, went down with the same injury.

Culver was in a jam.

Fortunately, a lifelong forward volunteered to switch to defense. The Culver coaches were not expecting a savior. Mason Lohrei was a skilled but gangly 15-year-old who had the misfortune, if you could call it that, to be in the middle of a growth spurt that had his legs screaming uncle.

“If you saw me skate then … ” the Boston Bruins defenseman says with a laugh. “People would be like, ‘He can’t skate.’ It was just that I’d grown so much. Growing up my whole life, I fit in. I was just like everybody else skating out there. I wasn’t flying by anybody. But that first year I got to school there, I was … baby deer.”

As a forward, Lohrei’s strength was making plays with the puck. Whether he could chase it down and keep it on his stick were separate issues.

“Wasn’t the best skater. Kind of soft, if I’m being honest with you,” Lohrei says. “Liked to have the puck on my stick, make plays and toe-drag guys.”

Despite his shortcomings, several factors leaned in Lohrei’s favor when shifting from forward to defense. He was smart. He was anxious to learn. 

And a critical mentor was ready to teach him.

Skating, first and foremost

The Bruins are excited about Lohrei. The 23-year-old defenseman scored 13 points in 41 games as a first-year pro in 2023-24. 

On Tuesday against the Florida Panthers, Lohrei projects to be the left-shot defenseman on the No. 2 pair with Brandon Carlo. He will quarterback the No. 2 power-play unit. The 6-foot-5, 211-pound defenseman is wired for offense.

“The sky’s the limit for him,” Charlie McAvoy says. “He’s an awesome, awesome kid. He shows up and works. Really, the sky’s the limit. I think he’s going to be an incredible hockey player. He already is.”

In one way, Steve Palmer could not have predicted Lohrei to follow his current development curve when he saw the 14-year-old put blade to ice. Lohrei had a long way to go.

“He was growing really fast,” recalls Palmer, then Culver’s U-18 coach. “It was hard for him to skate properly because he didn’t have much strength in his legs. But his balance and his edges were phenomenal. Because he worked on them all the time.”

By then, Palmer knew Lohrei well. Young Mason had spent summers at Culver, where father Dave Lohrei, a longtime coach, was managing the rink. Palmer identified the coach’s son as many things: rink rat, skilled player, coachable kid.

All of these factors signaled to Palmer that Lohrei was eager to grind.

“Mason is savant-like in his ability to implement a physical correction,” says Palmer, who was a four-year player at Clarkson University. “I do a lot of coaching in tennis and hockey. My parents were Olympic gymnastic coaches. So I’m aware of body movements. And if you tell Mason to move his hands an extra inch, he can move it an extra inch. Where some kids can’t. They can’t take the correction very well. If you tell Mason, ‘OK, you need to do this,’ he understands. He can implement a hip movement or something like that right away. He’s very body-aware.”

By the time Lohrei raised his hand for defense, he was well into a skating program Palmer had devised. Palmer put Lohrei on a slide board off the ice. Before practice, they reviewed video to improve Lohrei’s stride length, the depth of his stance and his edges. Lohrei was a regular in the weight room to pack muscle onto his fawn-like legs.

Lohrei got stronger. At the same time, he improved his technique. It was becoming clear the forward would not return to his natural position. He was making too much of an impact pushing the pace from the back end.

“There was opportunity for more ice time at that position,” Palmer says. “He thrived when he was on the ice more. He just got better and better and better. He understands the game very well. Defensemen have to have a little bit better of an understanding than a winger, I would say, of hockey in general. He was able to really understand the position very quickly from an offensive standpoint.”

On defense, Lohrei had more time to make plays. He could take a breath to process his surroundings and determine his next move. He especially enjoyed how as a defenseman, he could choose the time and situation for when he could press for offense.

By his senior year, Lohrei earned a scholarship from Ohio State. The Buckeyes wanted him to continue his development with the USHL’s Green Bay Gamblers before coming to Columbus.

By the middle of his first USHL season, one NHL team had taken a special interest.

Projecting the future

Dave Lohrei loves to tell the story of his son’s draft experience. It was the second round in 2020. The draft was virtual. When the Bruins selected Lohrei at No. 58, nobody, including NHL Network analyst Brian Lawton, had an introductory paragraph on the 19-year-old, let alone a book.

“I thought Brian Lawton was going to swallow his mike,” Dave Lohrei recalls.

Lawton wasn’t the only surprised party. The Bruins had gone off the board by drafting a kid who had only been playing defense for three full seasons.

“Some nights, he probably thinks he’s playing forward still,” general manager Don Sweeney cracks of Lohrei’s tendency to roam. “That’s part of the thing we like about him, to tell you the honest truth. He’s got confidence in his skill set. We just saw a really upward trajectory in a short period of time. His receptiveness in his coaches he was playing for. He was really eager to continue to learn while not losing confidence in the skill sets he believes he has.”

After a second tuneup season with Green Bay, Lohrei advanced to Ohio State. He scored 29 points as a freshman, second on the team to future Bruins teammate Georgii Merkulov. Lohrei scored 32 points as a sophomore before turning pro.

Lohrei acclimated ahead of schedule. Part of the reason the Bruins let Matt Grzelcyk go this summer was because Lohrei projected as a long-term left-side fixture.

But Lohrei’s rookie season was only the beginning.

“I want to be great,” Lohrei says. “I want the Stanley Cup. I want to be a top defenseman in the league.”

So this summer, Lohrei returned to Indiana. He had work to do.

Explosive effort

Lohrei is a handful for opponents when he reaches cruising speed. His hockey sense, creativity and fearlessness make him an offensive threat even amid mayhem.

To get to that tempo is still a work in progress.

With more speed in mind, Lohrei trained with Palmer at Culver this offseason. They focused on Lohrei’s forward and backward acceleration. During small-area drills, Palmer encouraged Lohrei to make plays when opponents were in his jersey, inside his arms, on his stick. Once the defenseman broke free, Palmer reminded Lohrei to put pucks on net with purpose.

Lohrei absorbed everything.

“His approach to getting better is exemplary,” Palmer says. “When we work together in the summer, he doesn’t do one drill that’s not 100 percent, where he is trying on every passing thing we’re doing, every skating thing we’re doing, he’s doing it like a rep that is his last rep.”

Lohrei could get faster. He could use more speed in reverse. Given the small sample size of his blue-line resume, Lohrei could improve with more experience.

If Lohrei layers all of that onto his skill, smarts and competitiveness, Palmer has a word for what kind of NHL defenseman the ex-forward could become: elite.

(Top photo: Sam Hodde / Getty Images)