A fateful switch to D, unwavering resolve carved Mason Lohrei’s path to Bruins

"I've always believed in myself and had that confidence in myself."

The temperature read 10 degrees below zero that night in Wisconsin.

It was enough to chill even a hockey lifer like Dave Lohrei to the bone. Which is why he couldn’t believe it when his son, 12-year-old Mason, gave him a call.

“I’m at my desk, get a call,” Dave Lohrei recalls. “And he says, ‘Hey, can you come over and pass pucks to me?’ And I said, ‘Where?’ He goes, ‘I’m on the pond.’ I said, ‘Wait, you’re on the pond?’

“So I put on my snowsuit, I put on everything, and I went over there, and there he was — on this little pond he had already shoveled off just enough snow to receive and shoot pucks. He was all bundled up, had scarves around his mouth, the whole deal.”

The temperature dipped to 20 below as the sun crept down over the horizon. But for an hour, father and son remained on the frozen sheet to work on Mason’s craft.

“I still think about it today,” Dave Lohrei says of that impromptu polar excursion. “It was 11 years ago, but that was him. I mean, he just wanted to go out here.”

After all, Mason Lohrei isn’t used to taking “no” for an answer when it comes to the game he loves.

Not when he found himself on the outside looking in at varsity reps in high school. Not when he navigated the growing pains that came with a switch to defense at 16 years old. Not when he was left off of several NHL Central Scouting rankings in the lead-up to the 2020 draft.

Just about every step of the way on his path to the NHL, Lohrei has carved out a reputation for proving others wrong. That perseverance in the face of adversity now has the 6-foot-5 blueliner on the cusp of a breakout season with the Bruins in 2024-25.

“I’ve always believed in myself and had that confidence in myself,” Lohrei said. “So even in those times when you’re getting cut from teams and stuff, I still believed that I’d play in the NHL one day.”

A life on the ice

The rink has always been a haven for Lohrei, especially given his father’s ties to the game.

A longtime hockey coach, Dave has mentored players across the continent, making stops in the ECHL, USHL, CHL, NCAA, and several other leagues.

Even though he spent most of his childhood in Wisconsin, Mason was born in Louisiana while his father was coaching the ECHL’s Baton Rouge Kingfish.

The younger Lohrei started skating at two years old in Reading, Pennsylvania, as his father helped coach the Kings’ ECHL affiliate, the Reading Royals. It didn’t take long for Lohrei to become a fellow rink rat.

“Playing street hockey, ball hockey, roller hockey, pond hockey, whatever it was, that’s what we were always doing,” Mason said.

Even outside of hockey, it didn’t take long for Dave to realize that Mason was resolute in just anything he set his mind toward. He remembers one memorable phone call he received when Mason was four years old.

“We got a call one day and the teacher said, ‘You have to come and get Mason. … So I went over there, and they were all playing in the playground area,” Dave Lohrei recalled. “Mason was actually standing over by himself, very frustrated because it wasn’t time to play basketball. They had a basketball court and he just wanted to play basketball. So that was him when he was four, and he’s just always been very driven.”

Eventually settling in Wisconsin, Mason continued to elevate his game on the ice as a skilled left-shot forward.

But Lohrei’s ascension as an NHL hopeful was far from linear. At 14 years old, he found himself on the outside looking at making the cut for his local AAA team. To further compound his frustrations, he didn’t make the varsity team in high school. JV practices at 5:30 a.m. were on the docket for his freshman year.

“Obviously, it’s frustrating, it sucks,” Lohrei said of getting cut from varsity. “But it’s just about taking things day by day. I think it just motivated me even more to keep working harder and stay at it.”

Wanting a clean slate, Lohrei asked his parents about attending Culver Military Academy — roughly 250 miles away from home — to further his hockey aspirations.

The Lohreis were already familiar with Culver, spending summers there while Dave served as its summer hockey director.

“It was probably the best decision I ever made,” Mason acknowledged.

Lohrei embraces the blue line

Mason had a good problem on his hands as he adjusted to his time at Culver.

A significant growth spurt during his freshman and sophomore years saw the shifty forward add seven inches to his frame over two years. Already a dynamic player with the puck on his stick, Lohrei suddenly had the profile of a player who could be a force at higher levels.

He just needed his skating to catch up with the rest of his accelerated development.

Under the tutelage of Culver coach Steve Palmer, Lohrei devoted plenty of hours into strengthening his legs, studying tape to improve his stride, and working off the ice with a slide board.

Still, consistent starting reps were hard to come by up front for Lohrei during his first season at Culver. He was in and out of the lineup, spending games in the stands and manning the camera to capture game tape.

But the sting of the injury bug signaled an opportunity for Lohrei. During that season, a pair of defensemen on Lohrei’s team each broke their collarbone. With Culver short on blueliners, Lohrei volunteered.

It was an path toward more ice time, and an opportunity to utilize his playmaking talents — albeit in a different role.

“I said I’d play D like two weeks before, and eventually they’re like, ‘Alright, yeah — we’ll have him try, I guess,’” Lohrei recalled. “So I was at practice and my coach came up to me and told me to jump into a two-on-one drill, and I’ve been playing D ever since.”

As expected, there were growing pains. As Lohrei exerted even more effort into building up his skating, he resisted the natural inclination to push the puck further up the ice when it was on his stick.

“He never really played defense the way you’re supposed to play defense,” Dave noted. “A lot of times he was the fourth forward on the ice.”

As daunting as the switch to defense was at first, Lohrei started to find his footing. Palmer’s skating program allowed Lohrei’s natural playmaking talent and offensive instincts to flourish with added mobility.

Assistant coach Rene Chapdelaine augmented Lohrei’s natural talent and pro-ready frame into a defenseman capable of disrupting forwards with his long reach and active stick.

There has been no shortage of defensemen gifted with Lohrei’s offensive skills. But few pack that talent into a 6-foot-5 frame like Lohrei’s.

Eventually, NHL scouts started to take notice.

“I think since he was five — his coaches might disagree — but from my point of view, I saw him get better every year,” Dave Lohrei said.

Making strides in the NHL

As intriguing a talent as Lohrei was, he was still viewed by some as a raw prospect — especially given the abrupt change in position at that stage of his hockey career. During his first draft-eligible year in 2019, no NHL team came calling.

Already an Ohio State commit, Lohrei opted to further hone his game at the USHL ranks with the Green Bay Gamblers. He recorded 37 points over 48 games during the 2019-20 season.

Still, Lohrei didn’t land on a single ranking sheet for NHL Central Scouting for months — at least not until the final list that was dropped before the 2020 draft. His spot? The 132nd-ranked player … among North American skaters in his draft class.

“My first draft-eligible year, I was never on any of those lists,” he said. “My second year, I wasn’t on any of those lists until the last one, I’m pretty sure. And even then, I was at the bottom of the list.

“But I think it comes from belief in yourself and not really caring about what other people have to say. Like, NHL Central Scouting isn’t picking the teams. So it doesn’t really matter what they have to say.”

Don Sweeney and the Bruins agreed with Lohrei’s line of thinking. Having already incorporated several poised, offensive-minded blueliners into their lineups over the years, Boston was smitten by Lohrei’s unique blend of skill and size.

Even if he needed plenty of seasoning, the Bruins didn’t want to let such a unique prospect slip through their grasp. Lohrei was taken in the second round (58th overall) by Boston, their first pick in the 2020 NHL Draft.

It was viewed as a surprise by many — and a reach by some critics.

“I have to tell you that Don Sweeney certainly gave the world a big surprise by taking him with his pick,” Dave Lohrei said.

It didn’t take very long for Lohrei to validate the belief that the Bruins held in him.

He tallied 59 points (19 goals, 40 assists) in 48 games with Green Bay in 2020-21, earning USHL Defenseman of the Year honors. His stock continued to soar with the Buckeyes (61 points over 71 games), with his .859 points per game average being the best for an Ohio State blueliner since at least 2003-04.

Lohrei arrived in Providence after signing his first contract with the Bruins in March 2023, following his sophomore year at Ohio State. He played eight total games in the AHL ranks.

Any musings about Lohrei needing a full year of development down in Providence were snuffed out last winter. He appeared in 41 games with Boston in 2023-24 — playing his best hockey during Boston’s second-round series against the Panthers.

Once viewed as a project, Lohrei, 23, is now an everyday NHLer.

It won’t always be seamless, as evidenced by Tuesday’s season-opening loss to Florida. But Sweeney and Boston’s top brass remain high on what a player with Lohrei’s size and puck-moving capabilities can offer on a revamped D corps moving forward.

“He has not been playing the position for very long, and at some nights, he probably thinks he’s playing forward still, but that’s part of the thing we like about him,” Sweeney said. “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. … He doesn’t get derailed when a mistake comes. Sometimes that’s hard for young players but he does a good job of shaking that off.”

Lohrei has come a long way from fishing pucks out of snow banks on that frozen pond with his father.

But be it the bright lights of the Stanley Cup Playoffs or a bundled-up skate in Wisconsin, Dave Lohrei would be hard-pressed to spot the difference in his son’s spirit over those 11 years.

“He just wants to focus on the task at hand,” Dave Lohrei said. “He always wanted to be a hockey player. And that’s what he’s doing right now.”

Conor Ryan is a staff writer covering the Bruins, Celtics, Patriots, and Red Sox for Boston.com, a role he has held since 2023.