A bridge year in Boston? Not with these Bruins penning the next chapter.
Bruins
“This next turn of the page here, this next chapter of Bruins history is going to be written by us.”
COMMENTARY
The 2023-24 Bruins are going to be worse.
That’s not a prognostication rooted in fear-mongering or a sour disposition that’s usually saved for the radio waves.
It’s an immutable shift that plagues even the greatest sports franchises over the steady decay of time.
Just look to the latest iteration of Ozymandias currently crumbling away in Foxborough for further evidence.
Granted, any Bruins fan from Bar Harbor to Barnstable could discern that their beloved team’s fortunes were set to shift this winter.
After rewriting the record books with 65 wins and 135 points in 2022-23, the Bruins could only go downhill from there.
A painful summer — starting with a crushing first-round exit — reinforced that sentiment.
Gone are Boston’s one-two punch down the middle in Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci — two franchise pillars who kept this team’s contention window ajar for over 15 years together.
A self-inflicted cap crunch brought along by a flurry of win-now maneuvers led to other key cogs like Taylor Hall, Dmitry Orlov, and Tyler Bertuzzi donning new sweaters this fall.
What remains is a revamped Bruins team setting a path toward uncharted waters.
That uncertainty is not lost on the remaining regulars in a rapidly changing dressing room.
“There might be some games on the back end and then within the net that we’re gonna have to steal this year,” Brandon Carlo said earlier in training camp.
But it’s a roster that’s far from rudderless.
It’s only natural for Bruins fans to expect more pain in the years ahead, especially after a storybook ending was ripped from the pages of last year’s presumed final kick at the can.
But for all of the talk of a prolonged stretch of mediocrity and the bill coming due for a franchise fixated for years on getting its old guard another shot at a Stanley Cup, that script isn’t the one being penned by Boston’s new guard.
“This next turn of the page here, this next chapter of Bruins history is going to be written by us,” Charlie McAvoy said Monday. Obviously, [Brad] being the lone guy left. We all have something to prove. That’s me. That’s [David Pastrnak]. That’s [Brandon Carlo]. That’s [Hampus Lindholm].”
The 2023-24 Bruins may not have the luxury of having two star centers anchoring their lineup, nor will Jim Montgomery have the depth on hand to slot a former Hart Trophy winner like Hall down to the bottom-six unit.
But the foundations that anchored Boston’s unprecedented success last season remain in place.
Even as Montgomery and his staff try to rework its forward corps on the fly, Boston is still buoyed by arguably the best 1-2 tandem between the pipes in Linus Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman. Five of the six defensemen who helped Boston jump up to a 43-8-5 record before the 2023 trade deadline remain in place.
With Charlie McAvoy and Hampus Lindholm in place, the Bruins can have a Norris-caliber defenseman out on the ice for 40-plus minutes of a 60-minute contest on most nights.
“Some form of stability, maybe you could say. Everybody’s back,” McAvoy said of Boston’s D corps and goalie tandem. “And we gotta lead from the goalie out. Best tandem in hockey last year, and if we can do our job in front of them, we can give them a good chance to do it again.
“They’re two exceptional goalies. Everybody on our D corps, we brought in some guys that are only going to help our group. So I think if we get our two goalies and our D, we can work our way forward.”
Boston won’t pack the same punch offensively. Questions will continue to hover around both Pavel Zacha and Charlie Coyle as they slot into critical top-six roles down the middle. But the Bruins still wield a few offensive cheat codes on the wing in 61-goal scorer David Pastrnak, Marchand, and Jake DeBrusk.
The change found further down Boston’s lineup opens the door for plenty of uncertainty.
But it also offers up plenty of opportunity, with those reps seized by younger players like Matthew Poitras and Johnny Beecher. As Boston looks to build a sustainable core for the post-Bergeron era, that duo — along with Mason Lohrei — could weave themselves into the fabric of this franchise with a strong first foray against NHL competition in 2023-24.
And in a season where the Bruins will pay homage to many bruising rosters of yesteryear, it’s only fitting that Boston’s centennial campaign could see this team revert back to its sandpaper style of play.
With his team’s scoring depth sapped, Don Sweeney added plenty of heft this summer in the form of Milan Lucic (6-foot-3, 236 pounds), James Van Riemsdyk (6-foot-3, 208 pounds), and Morgan Geekie (6-foot-3, 203 pounds).
Add in other bottom-six bruisers in Trent Frederic (6-foot-3, 220 pounds), Jakub Lauko (6-foot-1, 193 pounds) and Beecher (6-foot-3, 216 pounds), and the Bruins could augment their DNA into more a punishing, forecheck-heavy squad that can grind out wins and land plenty of welts along the way.
Perhaps it’s an archaic way of thinking as far as roster construction. But just ask a forecheck-heavy Panthers team if such a strategy can pay off in the postseason.
And with new captain Brad Marchand looking to stamp his own imprint over a motivated roster, it wouldn’t come as much of a surprise if the Bruins do their best to rankle whatever opponent stands in front of them this season.
“It’s not necessarily the best team that wins the Stanley Cup, but it’s the team that’s playing the best hockey that wins the Stanley Cup, and that was certainly true last year,” Bruins chief executive officer Charlie Jacobs said. “Again, the pressure, the expectation, we’re the Boston Bruins, we’re an Original Six team, we’re celebrating our 100th anniversary.
“I think everyone here understands the gravity of the opportunity, and the gravity of what we have in front of us for this upcoming season.”
The Bruins will need plenty of fall their way if they want to surpass the results that last year’s roster achieved.
Two of Coyle, Zacha, and Poitras will need to hit at critical areas of the roster. Supporting cast-members like Frederic, van Riemsdyk and Geekie all need to drive play. Once again, Boston will need to avoid the sting of the injury bug.
But it’s an exercise that’s not limited to just the Bruins. Not in a maddening, unpredictable sport where a fourth-string goalie in Vegas just beat an eighth-seeded Panthers team in the Stanley Cup Final.
So go ahead, doubt the 2023-24 Bruins.
You certainly won’t be the first one.
If you ask the fixtures still presiding in the dressing room, that’ll just make the story even sweeter.
“None of us have won, [we’ve] been right there and we’ve gone as far as you can go,” McAvoy said of Boston’s new leadership. “And we have some experience. But what is our legacy going to be? I think that’s something I’m trying to internalize.
“I’ve got a lot of time left here that I’m extremely grateful for and we’ve got to be building something good. I think that’s what we’re doing.”
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