The offseason has arrived for all but the two teams who are still taking part in the playoffs. For the rest, it’s time to examine what they will need to accomplish over the coming months. Next up is a look at Boston.
There were some question marks surrounding the Bruins heading into the season after they lost both Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci. However, they nearly won the Atlantic Division once again to bring their playoff streak to eight straight years.
Boston got past Toronto in the opening round before falling to Florida in the second round. Armed with cap and roster flexibility for the first time in a while, GM Don Sweeney has a chance to reshape the roster or to keep the bulk of the core together.
Here’s what should be on their to-do list in the coming weeks.
Add an impact center
After losing their top two middlemen from the year before, the Bruins didn’t do a whole lot to replace them. Morgan Geekie came over after being non-tendered by Seattle while John Beecher and Matthew Poitras came up from the minors and the OHL respectively to largely fill the other vacancy.
In the meantime, Charlie Coyle and Pavel Zacha covered the tough minutes. All things considered, they cobbled together a solution relatively well given their cap constraints.
Now they don’t have those constraints; they have over $21M in cap room, per CapFriendly. They now have an opportunity — and a need — to try to address that. While their internal options fared well, they’re not a group of middlemen that a contender typically has.
There aren’t any true No. 1 options on the open market this summer but there are some proven second options that can at least give them some more impactful depth. They were speculatively linked to Elias Lindholm last summer and it stands to reason they’ll have interest in someone who can cover the hard two-way minutes like Bergeron used to.
Among the secondary options are Chandler Stephenson, Sean Monahan and Matt Duchene. All three have had success on the second line recently and have some upside at the offensive end. They might not produce more than the 60 and 59 points that Coyle and Zacha put up but a third middleman in that range would lengthen their offense and hedge against some injuries.
In theory, they could try to trade for a center but given the dearth of trade assets they have (a byproduct of going for it regularly), it’s hard to see them putting together a package that could land a top-six piece so turning to free agency should be the way they go.
