It’s time for the Boston Bruins to go all-in for Leon Draisaitl
Bleacher Reports’ Joe Yerdon listed five different teams for Edmonton Oilers forward Leon Draisaitl to land in 2024, and the Boston Bruins were one of them. No, the Bruins don’t have an ideal cap situation, or they won’t once they re-sign Jeremy Swayman and potentially Jake DeBrusk, but it shouldn’t deter general manager Don Sweeney from doing all he can to make a move to acquire Draisaitl.
Even without the NHL’s best goaltending tandem in Swayman and Linus Ullmark, the Bruins are still one of the league’s best defensive-oriented teams. Swayman now has a good partner in Joonas Korpisalo, and players like Hampus Lindholm, Charlie McAvoy, and Brandon Carlo, among others, make the Bruins overall defensive units one of the best in the NHL.
But forward is another story, with David Pastrnak, Brad Marchand, Charlie Coyle, and Pavel Zacha being the only four legitimate threats when the team has the puck, at least as far as last year’s numbers show us. Boston hasn’t gone incredibly far in the playoffs in the previous two seasons, and one reason why is their forward group.
Making a deep playoff run means getting around the newly-crowned Stanley Cup Champions, the Florida Panthers, and it’s not happening unless they acquire a star forward like Draisaitl. This is a player who finished with 106 points last season while scoring 41 goals, and the tandem he would make with Pastrnak alone would put the Bruins on another level.
Boston Bruins must relentlessly pursue Leon Draisaitl this summer
Even with an overall patchwork group of scoring or playmaking forwards behind the group I just mentioned, the Bruins still finished 12th last season with 267 goals scored. Not bad, but if they had just one more viable scorer, Boston would have clinched the Atlantic Division.
This isn’t saying flipping home-ice advantage would have ended in their favor this season, but doing so in 2024-25 allows the Bruins to face a wild card team instead of the Toronto Maple Leafs or the Florida Panthers, both of whom gave Boston a tough time this past postseason.
And yeah, I know, the last time the Bruins played a wild card team in the postseason, they lost in seven games. But adding someone like Leon Draisaitl transforms a team like the Bruins, and he’ll also have a chip on his shoulder after coming so close to winning the Stanley Cup this year - against the Panthers, of all teams.
Overall, going all-in for Leon Draisaitl wouldn’t make things easy for the Bruins from a salary cap standpoint, but he’s also the missing puzzle piece in allowing this team to create a deep playoff run. If he's 100 percent serious about getting back to the playoffs, Don Sweeney will do all he can to bring in the star forward.
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