Boston Bruins: PK Subban headed to town for home opener against Devils

The Boston Bruins’ home opener for the 2019-20 season has been confirmed, with the New Jersey Devils headed to TD Garden on Saturday, October 12th.

For the Boston Bruins, it will be the chance to turn over a new page, shake the upset of their Stanley Cup Final defeat and re-focus on a whole new regular season.

They’ll do so against a New Jersey Devils outfit only one year removed from making the play-offs on the back of Taylor Hall‘s impressive form, that has added a game-changing player with the first overall pick of the 2019 NHL Draft in Jack Hughes and followed it up by giving away what amounted essentially to scraps in return for defenseman P.K. Subban.

There’s obviously a tonne of time between now and then and plenty can happen. We’ll get answers to all of the pressing Boston Bruins questions, no doubt. Most notably, how do you fit a new contract for Brandon Carlo and hopefully a long-term one for Charlie McAvoy under the salary cap, especially as it only increased to $81.5 million, not the $83 million that was expected.

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That, and, is there any possible way to hold on to Marcus Johansson, who performed strongly after his trade deadline deal from the Devils?

Given the limited number of expiring contracts and the salary cap limitations, I doubt we’ll see major activity this summer from the Boston Bruins, but of course, stranger things have happened. Just four seasons ago, the idea of P.K. Subban in any colour but that of the Montreal Canadiens would’ve been a bold call to make. Now he finds himself with a third team in just a little more than three years.

Of course, at the start of the season, should the Boston Bruins line-up in similar fashion to the Stanley Cup Final, all of the experts and columnists will be questioning the ability of an ageing core to continue propping the team up.

They’ll be pointing to Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand‘s lack of production against the St. Louis Blues as a sign of the inevitable drop from elite players to just very good players. They’ll be the usual pointing to Zdeno Chara as a relic of the past, as too old to play in the NHL and they’ll be the usual questions raised about David Krejci and whether he is a true second-line center or not.

These are the inevitable. If you’re a Boston Bruins fan, you’ve no doubt debated every single one of these with friends, family and pretty much anyone that’ll listen.

This off-season, unfortunately didn’t quite go the way we’d all planned, with a Stanley Cup parade, Cup days and general parties all round. However, I’m sure by the time we see P.K. Subban, Taylor Hall, Jack Hughes and the rest of the New Jersey Devils, we’ll be ready to knuckle down and forget about the anguish and heartbreak of Game 7.