Breaking down the state of the Boston Bruins after start of NHL free agency

BOSTON — The bill has come due for the Boston Bruins.

After years upon years of vying for championships and paying the requisite prices to do so, general manager Don Sweeney faced a bear of a task this summer while trying to maintain a level of play from a team that’s coming off the best regular season in NHL history. A lower than anticipated salary cap and a ton of dedicated money for the upcoming season made that a tougher job than usual.

But the work got underway in earnest over the weekend, so here’s a closer look at the moves, non-moves, and losses from the Bruins thus far.

Additions

James van Riemsdyk, LW
Morgan Geekie, C
Patrick Brown, C
Milan Lucic, LW
Kevin Shattenkirk, D
Jayson Megna, C*
Anthony Richard, C*
Parker Wotherspoon, D*
Luke Toporowski, LW **

*Two-way contract
**Entry-level contract

The Bruins entered free agency with just six NHL forwards under contract, so it’s no shock that they went forward-heavy with their additions. (That was in line with their draft choices, as they took four forwards and one D-man this year.)

James van Riemsdyk is well known in the region, first for his days skating at UNH and then kick-starting the Flyers’ comeback from a 3-0 deficit in Game 7 of a 2010 playoff series against the Bruins — a game which still makes Boston fans nauseous all these years later. Now 34 years old, van Riemsdyk is past his peak, but he’s still an effective player, averaging a tick under a half-point per game over the past two seasons. His 12-17-29 totals in 61 games played last year for Philadelphia aren’t quite at Taylor Hall’s 16-20-36 totals (also in 61 games) … but they’re also not that far off.

Milan Lucic is, of course, a Boston legend, and he’s sure to rile up TD Garden crowds next season while bullying opposing players after whistles and restoring some level of toughness and intimidation that has certainly waned since his departure in 2015. His days as a top-six, productive forward are long gone, but he’ll contribute in a fourth-line role.

Morgan Geekie may be centering that fourth line, with the Bruins expected to lose Tomas Nosek to free agency. Geekie’s a sturdy center at 6-foot-3, 200 pounds, who’s averaged .35 points per game over the last two years. It’s possible that the Bruins need Geekie in a third-line role, depending on Patrice Bergeron’s ultimate decision, but the 24-year-old should be capable of handling that situation.

The 6-foot-1, 210-pound Patrick Brown figures to be in the mix on that fourth line, too. While he doesn’t bring much in terms of scoring, he’s not afraid to throw his body around, delivering 167 hits last season. (That total would have ranked second on the Bruins last season, 20 more than Nick Foligno and 41 fewer than Connor Clifton.)

Take it all together, and the Bruins will likely roll with Charlie Coyle and Pavel Zacha as their top two centermen, with Brad Marchand and van Riemsdyk at left wing and David Pastrnak and Jake DeBrusk at right wing on the top two lines. After that, the Bruins still need to sign restricted free agent Trent Frederic, but the new additions help fill out the bottom two lines.

With (potential/likely?) losses of Bergeron and Krejci along with the losses of Hall and Tyler Bertuzzi, the Bruins definitely didn’t improve up front. But there’s also some opportunity for younger players — RFA Jakub Lauko, Marc McLaughlin, Fabian Lysell, etc., plus the two-way contract players signed over the weekend — a chance to earn some playing time.

On the back end, former BU defenseman Kevin Shattenkirk adds experience and depth to the D corps, which lost Clifton and Dmitry Orlov in free agency. Shattenkirk was a minus-20 last year, but he played on a Ducks team that ranked second-to-last in goals for and dead last in goals against. In his 13-year career, he’s averaged over 20 minutes of ice time per game, and he’ll be a reliable right-shot D.

Departures (Free Agency)

Tyler Bertuzzi, RW
Connor Clifton, D
Garnet Hathaway, LW
Dmitry Orlov, D

Departures (Trade)

Taylor Hall, LW
Nick Foligno, LW

Potential Departures (Retirement)

Patrice Bergeron, C
David Krejci, C

Likely Departure (Free Agency)

Tomas Nosek, C

Connor Clifton got three years and $10 million from the Sabres, a substantial and well-earned pay raise from the $1 million he made over each of the past three seasons. Dmitry Orlov got some major cash from the Hurricanes with a two-year, $15.5 million deal. Sweeney surely knew both of those players were set to receive their money from teams that could afford it, so neither loss was surprising. Garnet Hathaway also received a nice bump up from his previous $1.5 million annual salary, as the Flyers gave him a two-year deal worth $4.75 million. Hathaway won’t have too much trouble appealing to John Tortorella in Philly.

The Tyler Bertuzzi situation is an interesting one, and it’s also unfortunate for Boston. Todd Reynolds, Bertuzzi’s agent, certainly envisioned something longer and more lucrative than the one-year, $5.5 million deal he got from Toronto. But with the cap going up just $1 million, free agency wasn’t exactly a spending spree across the league.

As it ended up, the Bruins could have kept Bertuzzi at that rate, after trading away Hall to clear that space. At the time, though, the Bertuzzi camp wasn’t entertaining such an offer, leading to the Bruins making signings elsewhere.

In total, Sweeney traded away two firsts, a second, a third, a fourth and a fifth-round pick for Bertuzzi, Orlov and Hathaway, and the Bruins got just two months of work in return. Some say that Sweeney was just going “all in” with a chance to win the Stanley Cup, which is fair — to an extent. But the reality is that Sweeney has traded away five first-round picks, five second-round picks and four third-round picks in his eight years on the job. He started his tenure by acquiring some high-round picks in the Lucic, Martin Jones, and Dougie Hamilton trades, but he hasn’t really been able to restock the draft pick cupboard since then. Having more selections over the years could have netted the Bruins a viable, cheaper option to replenish the NHL roster right now, but that lack of picks certainly is looming large after this wave of departures.

Key Unsigned RFAs

Trent Frederic, C/RW 
Jakub Lauko, C/LW
Jeremy Swayman, G

Though there was some speculation that Sweeney might trade away Linus Ullmark — including some speculation from Ullmark himself — the Bruins made it through the first weekend of free agency without using the reigning Vezina winner to clear salary cap space. There’s still work to be done in net, though, as signing Jeremy Swayman remains the most important remaining work for Sweeney at the moment.

Swayman is coming off his entry-level deal, which paid him a tick over $1 million per year over the last three seasons. He’s played excellently, going 54-23-7 with a 2.24 GAA and .920 save percentage while posting nine shutouts. Since he made his NHL debut in April 2021, he has the sixth-most shutouts in the league, despite ranking 31st in games started during that time. Swayman’s due for a contract that pays him around $4 million annually. The Bruins have just over $6 million in cap space, so it’s not as simple as giving him that deal. Some work remains necessary for Sweeney to finagle the cap in a way that allows the team to maintain its goaltending tandem for another year.

As for Frederic, he’s also due for a pay bump from his $1.05 million salary, after he played 79 games and scored 17 goals with 14 assists (all career highs) last season. 

If Sweeney wants to clear space, he still has some wiggle room on defense. Charlie McAvoy, Hampus Lindholm and Shattenkirk should be considered roster locks, but there’s still a chance Sweeney could part with either Matt Grzelcyk ($3.69 million cap hit) or Derek Forbort ($3 million cap hit) to alleviate some of the salary cap stress still facing the Bruins.

That being said, Sweeney didn’t sound like he was eager to move Grzelcyk when he spoke to the media over the weekend, and he even wagged a finger at the media for starting trade rumors. So it’s unclear what the GM has planned to put the finishing touches on the roster.

The Big Picture

Ultimately, the question is simply whether or not the Bruins can maintain a level of play close to last year’s. Realistically, that was never going to happen, even if Sweeney was allowed to bring back the exact same roster. The Bruins were on an extraordinary run last year, and it would be ludicrous to expect a record-setting follow-up season, regardless of the circumstances.

Still, it would be equally unwise to expect the Bruins to even come close to that 65-win, 135-point season. That’s not to say that the Bruins are doomed. In fact, Sweeney did quite well to restock the lineup, given his cap situation. But the potential loss of the top two centers simply cannot be glossed over.

Patrice Bergeron is Patrice Bergeron, and even at 37 years old, he remained a near-perfect player for Boston last season — his injured postseason appearances notwithstanding. Krejci has always been underappreciated in Boston, so it’s likely that his assumed departure may not be considered a huge loss, but Krejci’s 40 assists will be sorely missed on the ice. If those two are gone, Jim Montgomery will have to elevate Charlie Coyle from the third line, where he seemed to be at his best, while also utilizing Pavel Zacha up the middle on one of the top two lines.

Throw in the losses of Hall and Bertuzzi, and there’s no doubt less firepower in the Bruins’ forward group. After the Bruins were one of just two teams to score more than 300 goals last year, there’s no doubt that they’re due to come back to the pack.

Yet with a sturdy D corps and arguably the best goaltending tandem in the league expected to remain intact, the Bruins will still be a viable team in the 2023-24 season. For as much as the losses are significant, the Bruins are bringing back the Vezina winner, the Jack Adams winner, the Hart runner-up/Ted Lindsay finalist, and the fourth-place finisher in the Norris voting. An Atlantic Division crown may not be in the cards, but they should be competitive on a nightly basis, and they should still at least be competing for a wild-card spot.

If Bergeron is to come back — either to start the season or, say, as a midseason addition — then the floor for this year’s team should rise exponentially. For Bruins fans who are desperate to see the Stanley Cup return to Boston, the outlook for the next season may not be overly exciting. But with upwards of $16 million coming off the Bruins’ books next year, and with the potential of the cap actually rising by more than $1 million, the Bruins should be able to rebuild a true contender next summer at this same time.