2023-24 NHL team preview: Boston Bruins
LAST SEASON
Going into the 2022-23 season, the Bruins seemed poised to take a step back and potentially be on the outside of the playoff picture for the first time since 2015-16. Sure, Patrice Bergeron was returning and they managed to get David Krejci back as well, but surgeries to two key pieces in Brad Marchand and Charlie McAvoy had them projected to miss the first couple months and seemed to put a competitive season in jeopardy.
Oh boy, were we wrong.
Not only did both Marchand and McAvoy return within the first month of the season, the team smashed it out of the gate regardless, starting the year with just one loss in its first 11 games, and two in their first 19. They obviously didn’t keep up that insane pace all season, but they were pretty close to that, finishing the year with a 65-12-5 record and setting the NHL record for wins and points in a season. This team just looked unbeatable in all facets of the game, and they seemed impossible to beat going into the playoffs.
Oh boy, were we wrong… again.
Despite an opening matchup against a Florida Panthers team that barely squeaked into the playoffs, the first round, never mind the playoffs as a whole, were not the cakewalk they appeared to be for the best regular season team in NHL history. They took a strong 3-1 series lead to start off, but then dropped the next three games, including two in overtime at home, to lose the series and end their season significantly shorter than expected. They took home plenty of hardware, including Linus Ullmark’s Vezina Trophy, Jim Montgomery’s Jack Adams award, and Patrice Bergeron’s Selke Trophy, but none was the award they were striving for.
KEY ADDITIONS & SUBTRACTIONS
Additions
Morgan Geekie, C
Milan Lucic, LW
Kevin Shattenkirk, D
James van Riemsdyk, LW
Jesper Boqvist, C
Departures
Taylor Hall, LW (Chi)
Nick Foligno, LW (Chi)
Connor Clifton, D (Buf)
Garnet Hathaway, RW (Phi)
Dmitry Orlov, D (Car)
Mike Reilly, D (Fla)
Tyler Bertuzzi, LW (Tor)
Tomas Nosek, LW (NJ)
Patrice Bergeron, C (retired)
David Krejci, C (retired)
OFFENSE
Part of the Bruins’ immense success last season was their consistent offense. They had the second best offense in the league behind the Edmonton Oilers in terms of goals per game with 3.67, and even at 5v5 they were second behind the Seattle Kraken in goals per 60 minutes with 3.15, although their 5v5 expected goals for rate took a bit of a steeper drop and was only 10th with 2.81. Marchand, Bergeron, Krejci, and McAvoy had seasons that were about what what you’d expect from them, but it was the Hart-finalist season from David Pastrnak, the career years from Pavel Zacha, Hampus Lindholm, and Jake DeBrusk, and the trade deadline injection of Dmitry Orlov and Tyler Bertuzzi that really loaded up this team’s offense and made them seem unbeatable… until they were beaten.
That offense takes a huge hit going into the 2023-24 season, as the Bruins lose the equivalent of two top-nine lines thanks to the salary cap crunch. Taylor Hall and Nick Foligno were shipped off to the Chicago Blackhawks for well below their value, Bertuzzi and Garnet Hathaway didn’t end up re-signing, and most importantly, both of their top two centers in Bergeron and Krejci retired, and the news came at a point in the offseason where the Bruins had few options to replace them. As it stands, their top two centers are Zacha and Charlie Coyle, and while Pastrnak, Marchand, and DeBrusk can salvage the overall ability of that top six, and James van Riemsdyk is a solid cheap signing for this group, it leaves a lot to be desired, especially as it goes deeper into the lineup. Kevin Shattenkirk will help the offense on the back end, but he’s still a downgrade from Orlov’s overall ability as well.
DEFENSE
While the Bruins’ offense was one of the best in the league last season, their defense was the best. Their 2.12 goals against per game was almost half a goal fewer than the next best team and they managed just 1.74 against per 60 minutes at 5v5, although they dropped to only the fifth best defense in terms of 5v5 expected goals against per 60 with 2.39. Some of the reason for stellar surface-level results were thanks to goaltending, but it’s not like the guys in front of them were slouches either. Lindholm stepped up big as a shutdown defenseman for them in McAvoy’s absence, Bergeron got himself his sixth Selke Trophy for his performance, and the rest of the group proved to play well in Montgomery’s systems.
That defense is about to take a steep hit up front with Bergeron now retiring. Losing a first-line center is already quite the hole to fill, but replacing one of the best defensive forwards of all-time will be about as easy as filling in the Marianas Trench. Losing Hall and Foligno is a hit to their defensive forward group as well, and the fact that they could only replace them with Lucic and van Riemsdyk, who aren’t exactly well known for their defense at this stage of their careers, means that group is going to get a bit worse up front, especially if they don’t add a center. On the back end it’s not quite as bad, as they maintained a lot of the key pieces like Lindholm, McAvoy, and Brandon Carlo, and while they did lose Orlov and Connor Clifton, Shattenkirk isn’t a bad add in that regard. But without a true top-six center, it’s safe to say the Bruins aren’t going to have the best defense in the league again.
GOALTENDING
You can’t talk about the Bruins’ goals against totals this year without talking about the team’s goaltending. Jeremy Swayman would have received significant praise for his season on any other team, with a .920 save percentage and 20.99 5v5 goals saved above expected, which respectively ranked 4th and 10th in the league among goalies with a minimum of 35 games played, but no one is talking about that because of the season Linus Ullmark had. He led the league with 40 wins despite not even playing 50 games, had the third best 5v5 goals saved above expected with 38.21, and not only led the league in save percentage, but his .939 was the second highest recorded save percentage ever among goalies with 40 games played. The Vezina was his to lose, and the goals saved above expected just go to show that it wasn’t only due to the team in front of him.
The Bruins are bringing back that duo next season, so they probably have nothing to worry about in the crease (although if I were in their shoes, I would have at least explored what the market was like for Ullmark). The fact that Swayman’s performance was exactly on par with his career so far means that we should expect similar things from him, although with Ullmark there should be some more caution. As great as his 2022-23 campaign was, it was well above his career average, which means we should expect a bit of a regression for next season. That might not be pretty, especially considering that the team in front of him is a downgrade as well, so definitely don’t count on a repeat season for him. It also wouldn’t be the worst time to start letting the younger goalie in Swayman get more starts and become the 1A in this situation, especially as the team seems to be approaching a retool phase.
COACHING
This will be Montgomery’s second season at the helm of the Boston Bruins, and he’s managed to put himself at quite the high standard. Coaching the best regular season team in NHL history and winning the Jack Adams as a result may seem tough to beat on the surface, but Montgomery and crew still have plenty to prove. Not winning the Stanley Cup makes that quite obvious, but beyond that, some wonder how much of the Bruins success last season came from their coaching or if it was just the players, and there were plenty of questions about the lack of adversity the team faced during the regular season, and when that finally happened in the playoffs, they lost. Well, they have their adversity now, not only rebounding from their disappointing playoffs, but also losing their top two centers, one being their captain, as well as plenty of other talent in the offseason. If the Bruins can still put up impressive defensive results without Bergeron, and see a similar level of success with a depleted group, I’m sure there will be fewer questions about Montgomery’s abilities (although again, expecting anything in the realm of last season is a pipedream).
ROOKIES
While a depleted forward group isn’t ideal for a team in playoff contention, the bright side to it is that the Bruins will have a great chance to find out what they have in their prospect pool. Years of Cup contention and selling off futures to go all in make it a weak group for the Bruins to choose from, but there are still some options that could crack the NHL team.
Perhaps the most developed option is Jakub Lauko, a 23-year-old winger that was knocking on the door last season and even got a bit of NHL time with 23 games. The Bruins will have plenty of holes to fill up front, and he seems to be the closest to NHL-ready in their prospect pool. He could make an impact in their top nine. Beyond him, Fabian Lysell has a decent chance of cracking the roster just based on his upside as a first-round pick. He had an excellent rookie season in the AHL, and if the Bruins are in desperate need of an offensive punch on their new roster, he could be the guy to provide that without having to break the bank on the trade market.
With both of their top centers in Bergeron and Krejci out of the picture, that could open the door for a prospect to have a solid preseason and get a shot in that top six if they think that their veteran options aren’t up to snuff. Georgii Merkulov seems to be the most NHL-ready option for that, but Matthew Poitras comes with a bit more upside and has the potential to surprise in training camp, although it’s probably more likely that he goes back to the OHL for another season.
Outside of the forwards, Brandon Bussi has been making headlines in the AHL and is likely the next in line in the crease in Boston if Ullmark or Swayman gets hurt. I doubt Bussi challenges for a permanent spot this season unless one of the two has a terrible season, but I wouldn’t be surprised if gets into his first NHL action at some point in the year.
BURNING QUESTIONS
1. What will the Bruins do about their center problem? I’ve talked ad nauseum about the massive hole down the middle that losing both Bergeron and Krejci created, but we still have no idea what the Bruins will actually do about it. Bergeron retired almost a month ago and Krejci retired last week, and we’ve yet to see the Bruins pivot to a new plan for their center depth. Sure, most of the offseason action has already happened, but there are still a few names out there on the trade market like Mark Scheifele or Elias Lindholm that they could pursue. Of course, that would require them to dip into an already depleted draft and prospect capital, and with both players due for new contracts next summer, they probably want a bit more insurance that they’ll be around for the long haul. Right now it seems like they’re just going to run with what they have in Zacha and Coyle and see how it goes, or maybe even make a move at the trade deadline, but even adding one high-end center to this group completely changes the outlook of the team.
2. Who steps up as the leader in this new era of the Bruins? Bergeron and Krejci’s departures don’t just leave a void on the ice, but off the ice as well. Those two and Zdeno Chara were big voices in the dressing room, and with both gone in the last few seasons, they’ve got some leadership roles to fill out. Marchand seems highly likely as one of the few from the 2011 Cup-winning team remaining along with still being an elite talent, and they also have Lucic returning to this group as well, although he isn’t the feared on-ice presence that he used to be. Or perhaps they start to go in a younger direction and let Pastrnak or McAvoy take the reigns as the face of the franchise. There are plenty of options, but they still have big shoes to fill after all those years of Chara, Bergeron, and Krejci.
3. How much regression will hit this Bruins team? You have to be a bit lucky to be good, especially in hockey, and the Bruins certainly benefitted from a fair amount of luck to win as consistently as they did in 2022-23. Ullmark and Zacha had outlier seasons from their usual career norms, and the team as a whole combined for a PDO of 103.46 and outperformed their expected goals percentage by more than 10%. That’s going to come back down to earth in 2023-24 in some form, but the real question is going to be how much it does. It could just be a simple case of the team dealing with more bad luck than good and barely squeaking in. Or we could be looking at a complete swing the opposite direction where Ullmark has a .900 save percentage, Zacha sinks to his previous scoring range, and the Bruins GF% ends up in the 40s among other ways it could go terribly wrong for this team. The depleted lineup is already going to take the Bruins a couple step backs from last season. How much regression they have to deal with could be the difference between them being a playoff team or not.
PREDICTION
I’m not going to make a bold prediction that the Bruins will easily miss the playoffs this season, because some people thought that last year and look what happened. Still, regression alone should mean that they aren’t going to sniff the same result as last season, never mind the fact that they lost a lot of pieces from that team. There are still avenues to the playoffs, especially if they add a center for the top six, but their playoff future looks to be in a lot more doubt this season, especially with the Buffalo Sabres, Ottawa Senators, and even Detroit Red Wings knocking on the door.
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