Had David Krejci returned to the Bruins for another season, it wouldn’t have been too hard to make the case that they would be a better team than last year.
Sure, there still wouldn’t have been the kind of game-changing big splash acquisition many fans were hoping for, but signings like Nick Foligno, Erik Haula, Tomas Nosek and Derek Forbort should improve the team’s depth. Linus Ullmark helps solidify the goaltending position, regardless of whether or not Tuukka Rask eventually returns. Better depth with the same top of the lineup equals better team.
But then Friday afternoon came, and Krejci announced he was leaving the Bruins to return home and play in the Czech Republic.
Now it’s a lot harder to see how the Bruins are going to be a better team than last year. Whatever improvements they made to their depth are more than canceled out by the loss of a still-very-good second-line center, especially with no clear replacement ready to step in.
General manager Don Sweeney said last week -- after all the Bruins’ signings but before Krejci’s announcement -- that the center position could be “a little bit by committee” this season. That would be a perfectly fine approach on the third and fourth lines, but the Bruins should know as well as anyone that you need more certainty in your top six.
For too many years, “a little bit by committee” also described their approach to Krejci’s wings. The result was that no matter what Krejci did, the Bruins too often ended up being a one-line team when it mattered most, with that rotation of wingers unable to provide offensive consistency.
The Bruins finally have good second-line wings in Taylor Hall and Craig Smith, but now they don’t have the center. Is it possible that line could produce consistently with Charlie Coyle, Nick Foligno, Erik Haula or Jack Studnicka in the middle? Sure, but it’s going to require quite the step up from one of them.
Coyle has been in the NHL for nine years now and has been a third-liner -- often a good one, sometimes an inconsistent one -- for the majority of it, including the two and a half years he’s been in Boston. Foligno definitely was a top-six forward in his prime, but he’s 33 now and has been better suited as a third-liner (not to mention a wing rather than a center) for a couple years now.
Haula has been mostly a third-liner as well, with the exception of one outlier 55-point season with Vegas in 2017-18. Studnicka has yet to stick at the NHL level, and expecting the 22-year-old to now do so that high in the lineup wouldn’t be fair to him.
Krejci had averaged at least 0.66 points per game in each of the last 13 seasons. Coyle, Foligno and Haula have topped that mark exactly once each -- Coyle in 2016-17, Foligno in 2014-15, Haula in 2017-18. Last year all three were 0.41 points per game or worse.
You can say, “Well, someone has to step up,” but when the guys you’re asking to step up have track records that suggest they may not be able to, is it really their fault if they’re not up to the task?
Of course not. It would be the general manager’s fault. And this is where we do need to point out that the offseason is not over. Sweeney certainly could still have something up his sleeve between now and training camp in September.
But Sweeney -- who, let’s be clear, was not blindsided by Krejci’s decision -- certainly hasn’t left himself with a whole lot of flexibility. After last week’s spending spree, the Bruins have just over $1 million of cap space remaining. Any move for a second-line center or top-pairing left-shot defenseman (their other big need that also remains unaddressed) would require a near-equal amount of salary to be moved out.
Add in the Bruins’ thin prospect pool and reluctance to trade any more first-round picks given said prospect pool, and it’s hard to envision any sort of blockbuster trade is around the corner. Acquiring someone like Arizona center Christian Dvorak (whom the Bruins were linked to recently) could be challenging enough right now, never mind entertaining the Jack Eichel homecoming dream.
There's another dream that Krejci may return to Boston for the stretch run of the season, but he would have to clear waivers to do so and one of the Bruins' rivals could put in a claim just to block it.
Again, more can and probably will happen between now and the start of the season. It’s not worth completely ripping Sweeney until those things do or don’t happen. But as things stand now, the Bruins look like a team that has not done nearly enough to improve on last season and try to make one more serious run at the Cup during the Bergeron-Marchand window.