In need of a fountain of youth
Another wave of players emerging key for success
The Bruins are in a tough spot, to be sure.
With Patrice Bergeron possibly set to retire, they will no doubt drop a notch or two from being the contender that they truly believed they were before being bounced out of the playoffs in the first round by the Carolina Hurricanes. But with front line players like Charlie Mcavoy, David Pastrnak, Brad Marchand, Taylor Hall and Hampus Lindholm still on the roster, they are not a team that is ready to do a cliff dive and thus worthy of detonation for a major rebuild.
In a word, the spot the B’s find themselves in is purgatory.
The question will be for GM Don Sweeney, presuming he’s reupped, is how can he push this team out of it and get it back to contender status? It will not be easy. As of now, they are just a couple million dollars under the salary cap, so they will not be able to spend their way out of their situation, at least not without a salary dump.
The B’s will no doubt be active on the trade market. They have to be. It certainly seems from both Jake Debrusk’s and Sweeney’s end- of- season interviews that the winger’s trade request is still very much active. If that’s the case, Debrusk has made himself a much more attractive trade target than he was last summer when the original request was made.
After it became public in November, Debrusk responded with perhaps his most consistent stretch of his career, and it started before he got the plum job with Bergeron and Marchand. He played well on Charlie Coyle’s line and his brief work on the fourth line helped him get the bump up to the penthouse. Signed to a reasonable $ 4 million deal for the next two years, Debrusk — who has twice scored 25 goals — should draw interest.
The B’s also have five left- shot defensemen, albeit two of whom will be coming off major surgery ( Matt Grzelcyk, shoulder; Jakub Zboril, ACL). With Lindholm not going anywhere and Derek For
bort unique among the group in his stay- at- home, penalty- killing attributes, that would seem to make Mike Reilly the most expendable of the group. Reilly, who started the playoffs as a healthy scratch but played well once inserted into the lineup, has two years left on a deal worth $3 million, a contact that would not be too onerous for a team to take on.
Whether a combination of those two could net them an experienced centerman with term (J.T. Miller, Mark Scheifele) or frees up money so they could go after a UFA ( Nazem Kadri, Vincent Trocheck), there is no doubt they will need an experienced centerman if Bergeron retires and the B’s cannot convince David Krejci to come back for old time’s sake.
But any such moves would be little more than a rearrangement of deck chairs, if that.
If the B’s are to regain any semblance of organizational momentum, it will have to come from within. They need some of their prospects to succeed. For that to
happen, they need to show a little more patience than they have in the past couple of seasons. Team president Cam Neely said last week that young players can’t progress if they’re always afraid to make a mistake, the implication being that that’s how it has been under Bruce Cassidy.
But to suggest that Cassidy, whose future has not yet been determined, cannot work with young players is hogwash.
All you have to do is go back to Cassidy’s first full season in 201718. While the B’s had their established veterans, they went with a major youth movement to supplement. Mcavoy, Debrusk, Grzelcyk, Sean Kuraly, Anders Bjork, Noel Acciari, Danton Heinen joined second-year player Brandon Carlo to get the ball rolling in the right direction. Not all those players panned out long-term, but a year later the B’s were in the Stanley Cup Finals.
The challenges are greater right now. The current prospect pool is not as deep as it was in
’ 17-18, and the veteran exodus had not yet begun. But there are a few youngsters that warrant a longer, consistent NHL look. Sweeney correctly said that Jack Studnicka’s development had “flat-lined,” but this is a kid who was the leading scorer for a first place Providence team in his pro rookie season when the pandemic hit. Studnicka, set to become an RFA, hasn’t seized his intermittent opportunities, but he has never been given the kind of latitude that some of the young players in ’ 17-18 received.
Oskar Steen, armed with a new one-way deal, should get a good look. And maybe, just maybe, this moment calls for the B’s to fasttrack the development of 2021 first round pick Fabian Lysell after his excellent junior season in Vancouver.
If ever there was a time the B’s needed a prospect to pop, it is now. And if they can find a gem like Bergeron (45th overall, 2003) with their second round pick in July’s draft, that would help, too.