Early Expectations for the Upcoming Season

The Bruins haven’t been in the news a lot recently. They have yet to make any signings that can contribute and have almost no cap space available. Rumors were flying all over the place about the returns of Captian Patrice Bergeron and Bruins great David Krejci, but the Boston hockey club has yet to make any formal announcement on the matter. Bruins GM Don Sweeney hasn’t said anything more than how good talks are with the two parties and the team’s office. As of now, no official contract has been signed.

It feels like the Bruins have no plan here outside of re-sigining their old core centers for one more go around. Along with the list of players who had surgery after the season ended, one of them being 32 goal scorer Brad Marchand, the Bruins find themselves in a big pickle, one they might not be able to get themselves out of for at least a year. One thing the Bruins could do is to use the space they will gain from putting all of the players who had off-season surgery on the long-term injured reserve list however, the return of those players would mean that salary would have to be cut for them to come back.

Ultimately the Bruins have found themselves at a crossroads. Do they play the kids and build for the future? Or Do they try to go as all in as possible in hopes to catch some lighting in a bottle? In the long term it could be a better move to just let new coach Jim Montgomery play the kids while his top players make their recovries and then integrate them when the time comes. If that means a year out of the playoffs then it is what it is. But the Jacobs’ family won’t part with their playoff checks so they’ll continue to force a square peg in a round hole and blaming everyone else for it on the way down. Instead they will try to use the fans’ high expectations to continue to spend their assets and money on square pegs when there are a bunch of round pegs witing to be given a chance.