The Bruins Basically Admitted This Season Is A Bridge Year
BOSTON (CBS) -- It's obvious to anyone who paid attention to the Bruins in the offseason. The Black & Gold aren't exactly trying to win the Stanley Cup this season. The general plan is "rebuild on the fly, and hopefully make the playoffs".
And now, the team's top executives essentially admitted that.
In trading Johnny Boychuk a year ago - and Dougie Hamilton before the 2015 draft - while doing little to replace those players' skill level, the defense is now in a full-on reboot. Bruins CEO Charlie Jacobs refused to give that label, but still put his own spin on the situation.
"I think of it as more as a refresh," Jacobs said of the team's current roster.
The Bruins seem to be preparing for the end of the line for captain Zdeno Chara, but no one in the system has emerged as a potential No. 1 defenseman besides 22-year-old Colin Miller. The top prospect acquired in the Milan Lucic trade will have a chance this season to emerge as a top-pairing defenseman at the NHL level, but if he spends time in the AHL the Bruins will have to turn to Zach Trotman, Torey Krug, and either Adam McQuaid or Kevan Miller to round out the top-4 behind Chara.
Bruins President Cam Neely, meanwhile, stepped in and defended Claude Julien after the head coach fielded questions about his job security. Neely expressed his full confidence in Julien as his coach - and implied that it was not the coaching that was to blame for last season's failures, but former GM Peter Chiarelli's butchering of the Bruins roster.
"Claude's a very good coach in this league," Neely said. "Don [Sweeney] came to us with a plan of how he would like to see the team play, and he's had many conversations with Claude about that, but a lot of things happen throughout the course of the year that's not necessarily just on the coach. It's unfair. I know why certain things are said at times, but it's really unfair to start the season where it's out there that the coach could be on the hot seat. It's unfair to Claude."
Neely is not wrong: Julien can't be blamed for Chiarelli's mismanagement of the salary cap, which led to the team's inability to retain Boychuk and Lucic and precipitated the trading of an apparently unhappy Dougie Hamilton - who might have re-signed with Boston if they overpaid, which they weren't in position to do.
The Bruins' trades yielded them several draft picks, including the San Jose Sharks' first-round pick in 2016. They used three first round picks on defenseman Jacob Zboril and forwards Jake DeBrusk and Zach Senyshyn. All three have the potential to become upper-tier NHL talents - Senyshyn in particular seems like a perfect Bruin - but they are likely at least a couple of years away from making meaningful contributions at the NHL level.
The Bruins remain optimistic that they can make the playoffs this season, and Neely insisted that their goal is still to win the Stanley Cup - but he's not exactly demanding it this time.
"I don't want to put any expectations. Our goal is to compete for Stanley Cups. You know we'll see how the season plays out," he said. "We have some cap space which we haven't had in a while. So we have opportunities down the road, if there's a situation that arises where Don feels like he can do something that's going to help us improve."
Translation: "Hopefully we contend, but I'm not making any promises."
The Bruins still have a solid veteran core that can carry the roster to a lower playoff seed. Chara, Patrice Bergeron, Tuukka Rask, David Krejci, and Brad Marchand should produce enough to keep them out of the NHL basement. But it was already unreasonable to expect anything more than sneaking into the playoffs with a 7-or-8 seed, and the front office admitted that they agree. With so many key pieces of the team's recent run replaced with draft picks and prospects, it's clear that the Bruins are essentially doing what the Patriots did with their defense around 2009 - rebuild, and cover it up by leaning on your horses to ride you to victory.
The Bruins roster may be just good enough to get them back to the playoffs, and of course anything can happen at that point. But it's obvious that most of the roster is in a transition period, a bridge year that they hope begins to build toward another successful run with a glut of talented home-grown players. Neely and Jacobs were cryptic about the whole situation, but it was still refreshingly honest. You can read between the lines and they are wide enough to drive a Zamboni through them.
The Bruins' solid core may make them look like a contender, and they may say it's still their goal to win the Stanley Cup. But it's not their true expectation. Not this year.
Matt Dolloff is a writer for CBSBostonSports.com. His opinions do not necessarily reflect that of CBS or 98.5 The Sports Hub. Read more from Matt here. Follow him on Twitter @mattdolloff and email him at mdolloff@985thesportshub.com.
