Cooper Simpson's breakout Phantoms season sets up Bruins camp test

Cooper Simpson’s 74-point year in Youngstown was enough to force the next question, not answer it. The Bruins’ third-round pick in the 2025 NHL Draft, 79th overall, is heading into Boston’s development camp at Warrior Ice Arena from Monday, June 29, through Thursday, July 2, with a breakout USHL season behind him and a much harder evaluation ahead at North Dakota.

The numbers from his Phantoms season jump off the page: 34 goals, 40 assists and 74 points in 61 games. Simpson did not just pile up empty production, either. He beat goalies from the one-timer, from downhill attacks and off the cycle, which is why Youngstown viewed him as more than a finisher when it landed him in an Aug. 11, 2025 trade from Tri-City. The Phantoms sent Brecken Smith, Luca Jarvis, a 2026 Phase I fourth-round pick, a 2026 Phase I sixth-round pick, future considerations and the rights to Evan Wanner to get him.

Youngstown’s investment made sense because Simpson had already shown his scoring touch in a different setting. The Phantoms described the 2007-born left-shot forward from Shakopee, Minnesota, as a player who scored 49 goals and added 34 assists in 31 games for Shakopee High School, a profile that helped him rank eighth all-time in Minnesota high school hockey goals with 139. He carried that touch into the USHL quickly enough that league reporting in December 2025 had him among the circuit’s top scorers with 18 points at that point in the season, and Youngstown game coverage later showed him stacking up multi-point nights and power-play goals.

The more interesting part of Simpson’s season is what happened around the scoring. He said the Phantoms expected to go deep in the Clark Cup Playoffs and were disappointed by a second-round exit against Muskegon after the 2025 run. That came a year after Youngstown fell in the Eastern Conference semifinals to Dubuque in its 2024 title defense, a backdrop that made every habit matter in a room built to win. Ryan Ward and the Bruins’ player development staff pushed the same point: Simpson’s progress was not just offensive. He talked about backchecking, stick positioning and better defensive responsibility, while Ward’s influence showed up in his growing leadership and teammate habits.

That is the real test now. Simpson has already proved he can score in the USHL. Bruins camp and the move to North Dakota will show whether the pace, details and two-way work travel with him, or whether he is still a junior scorer who has more proving to do before anyone starts drawing up an NHL timeline.