The Boston Bruins enter the 2023-24 season with more question marks than they've had in many years. That tends to happen when your top two centers for over a decade – Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci – retire in the same offseason.
The chances of this year's team winning as much as last year's record-setting regular-season squad are slim to none, but that doesn't mean they can't still have a successful season, and possibly a more successful postseason.
There are a lot of questions that will need to be answered between now and April, though, and that process begins Wednesday night when the Bruins host the Chicago Blackhawks in the season opener. Let's take a look at some of the biggest ones:
1. Will the centers step up?
The biggest and most obvious question. The retirements of Bergeron and Krejci leave Pavel Zacha and Charlie Coyle as the top two centers. Zacha broke out in his first season in Boston last year, with his 57 points topping his previous career high by 21 and slotting him right between Bergeron's 58 and Krejci's 56. The only Bruin with more 5-on-5 points than Zacha was David Pastrnak.
Most of that production came while playing wing on a line with Krejci and Pastrnak, but Zacha also impressed during his late-season trial run at center. During 145 5-on-5 minutes that Zacha centered a line with Pastrnak, the Bruins had 57% of shot attempts and 58% of goals. Zacha and Pastrnak will start the season together again, now with veteran James van Riemsdyk on their left.
Zacha has the tools to build off his breakout season and help that line produce like the "Czech Line" did last year. He welcomes the pressure of trying to help replace Bergeron and Krejci. But he still has to go out and do it as a full-time top-six center for the first time in his career.
Coyle, meanwhile, is also coming off one of the best seasons of his 11-year career. His 45 points were his second-highest total, and he took on tougher matchups, more defensive-zone draws and more penalty-kill minutes than he ever had before. He'll open the season on a line with Brad Marchand and Jake DeBrusk, the same wings Bergeron centered last year.
No one is asking Coyle to be Bergeron, but the Bruins will need that line to remain a defensively responsible line that can handle top matchups, and they will need Coyle to produce more offensively now that he has even better wings flanking him.
Summer signing Morgan Geekie was penciled in as the third-line center, but the preseason breakout of 19-year-old Matt Poitras has changed that plan at least temporarily, with Geekie sliding over to wing to make room for the talented youngster.
Poitras could drastically change the outlook at center if he sticks this season and proves to be a real difference-maker. He has nine games to make his case before the Bruins must decide to either keep him and burn the first year of his entry-level contract or send him back to Guelph in the Ontario Hockey League.
It's a similar story at fourth-line center, where 2019 first-round pick Johnny Beecher beat out veteran Patrick Brown, who was signed to a two-year deal over the summer. Beecher will be tasked with playing consistent defense, but also driving a line with wings Milan Lucic and Jakub Lauko that coach Jim Montgomery says he expects to have "speed and tenacity" and be "relentless" on the forecheck.
2. Will there be enough secondary scoring?
On top of Bergeron and Krejci up the middle, Boston also lost scoring depth on the wing with the departures of Taylor Hall and Tyler Bertuzzi. The Bruins were so deep that they had the luxury of playing Hall on the third line most of the season. They do not have that depth or that luxury this year.
They do still have Pastrnak, though, and all he did was score 61 goals last year. They also have a Marchand who says he feels healthier than he did all last year, when he was recovering from double hip surgery. DeBrusk tied a career high with 27 goals last season despite missing 18 games due to injury. If he stays healthy, he could certainly push into the mid-30s or even higher this year, which would be huge for the Bruins and huge for DeBrusk as he seeks a new contract.
After that, the Bruins will need some wings to step up. Van Riemsdyk has landed in a golden situation on a line with Pastrnak and Zacha. After his goal total got sliced in half, from 24 in 2021-22 to 12 in 61 games last year, he will be expected to bounce back in a major way in his first season in Boston. He will not last on that line if he doesn't.
On the third line, Trent Frederic more than doubled his career high in goals with 17 last year. He's no longer on a line with Coyle and Hall, but the Bruins will still need him to be in that neighborhood again. New linemate Geekie had encouraging 5-on-5 rate stats in Seattle, but that was in a fourth-line role. Boston needs that potential to translate to reality as he now moves up a line. If Poitras sticks, his playmaking could certainly be a big plus for Frederic and Geekie.
The fourth line of Lucic, Beecher and Lauko may not be expected to do a ton of scoring, but they will certainly have to chip in. Montgomery also wants his defensemen even more involved offensively this year, and that effort will be led by Charlie McAvoy and Hampus Lindholm.
3. Will the team defense hold up without Bergeron?
The Bruins' strength should be their defense and goaltending (more on the goaltending next). They return a lot more on defense than they do up front, with McAvoy, Lindholm, Brandon Carlo, Matt Grzelcyk and Derek Forbort all back. Veteran free-agent signing Kevin Shattenkirk has Stanley Cup pedigree and his puck-moving ability could make him a better fit on the third pairing, and in Montgomery's system, than Connor Clifton was. Top prospect Mason Lohrei could contribute sooner rather than later after a strong camp kept him in Boston right up until final cuts were due.
One small little fact that all of that glosses over, though, is that the Bruins lost the greatest defensive forward in NHL history this summer. The Bruins and Montgomery have a very good defensive system, yes. But even Montgomery expects a step back with Bergeron gone.
"You can't expect to be as good in our D-zone coverage as we were last year," Montgomery candidly admitted to The Athletic's Fluto Shinzawa. "We lost the best defensive player of all time."
The good news is that the Bruins don't have to be as good as last year to be a good defensive team. They allowed nearly half a goal per game less than any other team last season. There's some wiggle room, but it's certainly not infinite. The returning D have to be rock-solid and the forwards, especially the new centers, have to pull their weight in their own zone.
4. Will the goalies be elite again?
And here's the second part of that "defense and goaltending" equation. The Bruins got historically great goaltending from Linus Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman last season. Their .929 team save percentage was 14 points better than any other team, the largest gap between one and two since 1983-84. Ullmark won the Vezina Trophy and became just the second goalie in the last 30 years to lead the league in wins, save percentage and goals-against average.
Expecting that kind of dominance again might not be fair, especially if the team in front of them does take a step back. But expecting them to still be among the best goalie tandems in the league is fair, and it's exactly what the Bruins will need. With Swayman getting a raise this summer, the Bruins now have $8.475 million against the cap committed to the goalie position, which ranks fifth in the NHL behind only the Florida Panthers, Tampa Bay Lightning, Seattle Kraken and Philadelphia Flyers (???). With that rightfully comes expectations of greatness.
5. How much will the kids contribute?
Poitras and Beecher making the opening night roster and Lohrei looking like someone who will be ready at some point this season has deservedly generated some needed excitement heading into the season.
But how much will they really be able to help this season? For now, expectations should probably be tempered a little. However, there's no doubt that the Bruins' ceiling goes up if two or all three of them are looking like impact players a couple months from now.
Imagine a world where, at some point during the second half of the season, Poitras has passed Coyle and is playing like a legitimate second-line center between Marchand and DeBrusk, and Lohrei has run with a top-four role on the back end playing next to either McAvoy or Carlo. That would be pretty exciting, wouldn't it? It's a lot to ask, but it also doesn't seem impossible based on what we saw this preseason.
6. How good will the rest of the division be?
Year after year, the Bruins, Lightning and Maple Leafs have seemingly been locks to finish in the top three spots in the Atlantic Division (in whatever order), or at least all make the playoffs. In fact, the only time since 2017 that someone broke their stranglehold at the top was 2021-22 when the Panthers won the division (and those other three all still made the playoffs).
The gaps would appear to be closing, though, with the old guard dealing with more question marks than years past and a few of the rebuilding teams in the bottom half of the division finally looking ready to make a push.
The Maple Leafs are the division favorites on paper and in the betting markets, but after finally having enough depth and enough defense to win one (1) playoff series last spring, they immediately lost a bunch of that depth and defense this summer due to their own cap crunch. They once again look like an all-offense team, which is not a formula that's worked for them in the past come the postseason.
The Panthers upset the Bruins and made a run all the way to the Stanley Cup Final, but it came at the expense of injuries to top defensemen Aaron Ekblad and Brandon Montour that are expected to keep both out until December. They also lost Radko Gudas in free agency and took a baffling quantity-over-quality approach to fill in the back end. Their offensive depth could keep them afloat for the first couple months, but they wouldn't appear to have a ton of margin for error.
The Lightning also start the season with a major injury situation, with star goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy recently undergoing back surgery that is expected to keep him out until December. Their backups are Jonas Johansson (a career journeyman backup) and Matt Tomkins (a 29-year-old who has never played in the NHL and who spent the last two years in Sweden). Oh, and they also lost Alex Killorn, Ian Cole and pretty much their entire bottom-six identity in free agency.
The Sabres came within a point of snapping their decade-plus playoff drought and hope a full season of Northeastern product Devon Levi in goal this year will get them in. Their biggest problem was their defense, though, and they did little to address that, with all due respect to old friend Connor Clifton. The Senators and Red Wings both have some promising pieces, but still have to prove they're ready to truly compete with the big boys. The Canadiens still stink.
The point here is that while the Bruins obviously have plenty of question marks of their own, so does everyone else in their division. There is no clear juggernaut on paper here. The Bruins missing the playoffs could be in play, but so could winning the division again. On paper, they pretty clearly have the best defense and goaltending. Finishing in the top three and locking themselves into this side of the playoff bracket would absolutely give them a chance to win a round or two. For the record, here's my prediction for the division:
1. Maple Leafs
2. Bruins
3. Panthers
4. Lightning
5. Sabres
6. Senators
7. Red Wings
8. Canadiens
And to wrap this all up, here are The Skate Pod's official Cup predictions from me, Bridgette Proulx and Brian DeFelice:
