The Boston Bruins want to remain in the competitive window, but a big offseason awaits

The Boston Bruins had an incredible regular season, setting NHL records for points and wins to become the best all-time regular season team, but unfortunately that season got cut a lot shorter than expected with a first round exit at the hands of the Florida Panthers. Now they find themselves in a cap crunch due to the bonus overages of Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci, as well as the incoming extension to David Pastrnak.

Frank Seravalli and Mike McKenna talked on Daily Faceoff Live about what the Bruins might do this offseason, and how they’ll navigate their salary cap situation.

Frank Seravalli: Don’t know yet whether Bergeron and Krejci are going to be coming back. Depending on who you speak to, and again not reporting this, but the sort of subtle whisper, the thought process is maybe they aren’t getting those guys back. That’s what people are whispering behind the scenes. And if that’s the case, one way or the other, you still got a whole host of other players that you need to figure out on your team.

What about Tyler Bertuzzi? You want to try and bring him back. It seems like they can’t afford to keep Dmitry Orlov. But this is a team that still wants to remain in that competitive window, and they might have someone like a Jeremy Swayman in net who could be an offer sheet target for some of these other teams.

Don Sweeney has a whole lot to figure out. He’s got pieces that he has to move out. I think he’s offered Taylor Hall to teams at almost a “take him off of our hands, we’re not expecting a lot back in return for him” given his cap hit and the term that’s remaining on his deal. They’re trying to get rid of Mike Reilly, who’s still a buyout candidate, potentially Derek Forbort. Go down the list, Matt Grzelcyk, these are all guys that are in play in a significant summer of transition for a Bruins team that still has Pastrnak and Charlie McAvoy and Hampus Lindholm to build around. Say nothing of the likely Vezina winner in Linus Ullmark.

Mike McKenna: Well I like the core that they have on the backend, that’s the nice part, it’s just how are you going to be able to keep everybody in the mix when you don’t know what’s going to happen. They need clarity from Bergeron and Krejci as soon as they can because they do have to lock up Trent Frederic who’s an RFA and Swayman as an RFA that could be $3-4 million. You’d like to keep them in house, but what if they do something crazy and make a trade. They have Brandon Bussi in the American Hockey League who had a great rookie season.

I don’t expect that, but I think that might be their nuclear option, because you laid out the path to clearing out cap space. Grzelcyk, Reilly, Forbort, Hall, there’s a lot there that can move. But the center position that the Bruins were so strong at this year is in question because of Tomas Nosek probably moving on as well. So, if you get Bergeron back, that’s great. If you get Krejci back, big bonus. But I think they need one of those two players to even be able to make it work and how they figure out anything else, and they need that clarity soon. So, if I’m the Bruins, I still like my backend, I’d like to add a little bit if possible like they did, but how do they do it under cap space. That’s the big question.

Frank Seravalli: Yeah, I think the gist of conversations, at least how they’ve been relayed to me, that general managers have had with Don Sweeney to this point has been “tell me who you like, tell me what gets you excited” so that they can potentially begin to figure this out based on which players might have some value, another reason why they got a player like Pavel Zacha locked up already too. You mentioned that center position and the hole that might be there, certainly could be active on the trade market on that front as well.