Don Sweeney has to enter training camp saying the right things in order to keep the fans invested in this season. It isn't easy to sustain excitement when the Boston Bruins' roster isn't up to par with past years, but it's important not to write off a year before it even begins.
People were questioning parts of the Bruins' roster before the 2022-23 season as well, and we all know how that regular season panned out. While the Bruins likely won't be breaking any league records this season, you still have to remain optimistic that they'll figure it out.
Don Sweeney's take on the roster is that the Bruins will have to "produce by committee" to get through this season. While it is a great way to go into the season, the chances of this committee being enough to get the job done are slim.
Don't get me wrong, this has the potential to be an exciting lineup. The young players are going to push for playing time, Matej Blumel could prove to be a diamond in the rough, Jeremy Swayman could have a revenge year, the defense is fully healthy again. There are reasons to believe that the Bruins are going to be better than people think.
But scoring by committee seems like a stretch. I took the projected depth charts from CapWages and added together the totals for each of those players' career best in goals. The total came out to be 319, which would put them tops in the league, but who on this roster is going to come anywhere near their career high.
Elias Lindholm probably isn't going to score 42 again unless David Pastrnak becomes one of the league's best playmakers. Even Pastrnak himself will struggle to reach 62 goals again until the Bruins find a playmaker to slot in the lineup with him. And while it'd be nice to replicate the production, no one can really believe that Morgan Geekie will hit 33 again.
One of the more significant offseason acquisitions, Viktor Arvidsson, is another player who hasn't looked like a 30-goal scorer since Nashville. It's hard to believe that this team can score enough to do it, and it'll take some truly shocking breakouts from Fraser Minten, Matej Blumel, and/or Matthew Poitras to even sniff being in the top-half of the league's scoring.
Can the Bruins lock in their defensive game and win with that solid core and Swayman? Sure, but let's not allow Sweeney to pretend that his grand idea for this season is to pick up a bunch of depth forwards and depend on them to score by committee. The forward group isn't deep enough to score with the rest of the league's teams, and everyone in the Bruins' front office knows that, regardless of what they're trying to sell to the fanbase.
If the front office doesn't know it, then it could be time to re-evaluate the team's analytics department. It took me five minutes to figure out that scoring 245 goals as a team (last year's middleground) is a pipedream.