The Boston Bruins enter the 2023-2024 season with a new-looking roster and a lot of questions. Some of the questions facing second-year coach Jim Montgomery is just how the lineup is going to look like on opening night against the Chicago Blackhawks at the TD Garden on Oct. 13. Will this be the year that some prospects make the jump to the NHL and make an impact?
That is just one of the lineup questions facing the Bruins this season and here are some training camp battles to keep an on eye when they open camp at Warrior Ice Arena in mid-September.
Top-Six Centers: Zacha & Coyle or Someone Else?
For the first time in 19 years, the Bruins will begin training camp without Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci. Both of their top-six center icons retired over the offseason and now Montgomery has the task of figuring out who is going to replace them. There are options on the roster, but where he goes will depend on what happens in camp and the preseason games.
Pavel Zacha and Charlie Coyle are the two top choices entering camp to replace the two future Hall of Famers but are they both up to the task? They got an opportunity in the playoffs last April against the Florida Panthers when both Bergeron and Krejci missed time with injuries and both played well. Zacha excelled in all situations and Coyle picked up some key assists and was more of a playmaker in his opportunity. Zacha spent most of the season on the wing and now going to the middle should be a seamless transition, but Coyle is the big question mark in the top six.
Former coach Bruce Cassidy moved Coyle to the second-line center spot for the first half of the 2021-22 season when Krejci left the Black and Gold and returned to his home country of Czechia to continue his career. It didn’t go well for the Boston native and after the Bruins returned from a COVID-19 shutdown before Christmas through New Year’s Day, Cassidy moved Coyle to the third line and Erik Haula to the second line and that’s when things took off for the top-nine center spot.
In free agency, the Bruins signed Morgan Geekie, and entering camp, he is considered a wild card to earn the second-line center spot. Like Zacha before he was acquired from the New Jersey Devils in a trade for Haula in July of 2022, Geekie played well with the Seattle Kraken but has not hit his ceiling yet and Boston is hoping he can this season. He can play on the wing, but it’s not out of the question that he’s able to move up in the lineup this season into the top six.
Prospects Watch: Merkulov, McLaughlin, Beecher & Lysell
When general manager (GM) Don Sweeney, Montgomery, and team President Cam Neely met with the media following the stunning first-round exit last spring at the hands of the Panthers, Boston’s eighth-year GM expressed that there was going to be roster turnover and was hoping to inject some youth into the 2023-24 lineup.
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“Ideally, I wouldn’t be sitting here. I’ll be perfectly honest with you. And I think everybody knows that,” said Sweeney. “And I take a lot of ownership in the fact that we’re sitting here. So, we have a really good group of young players that are committed to this organization in some key positions for our organization. We have to grow and foster some younger players that will play some roles. So, we feel good about if you look at guys who can go and play a top-six role right now. I think we have to fill the bottom part of our roster.”
Just who could make the jump to the NHL from the Providence Bruins in the American Hockey League (AHL) will be something else to watch in the preseason. Last season Marc McLaughlin had a very good preseason but was part of the last round of cuts to the AHL. Georgii Merkulov had a strong first pro season with the P-Bruins and has a skill set that can translate to the NHL. Top forward prospect Fabian Lysell has a shot to make the roster with a strong camp, while Johnny Beecher’s best chance to make the Boston roster out of camp in the bottom six is this season.
The problem for the prospects is the fact that despite saying that they wanted to inject some youth into the lineup, it’s going to be hard to do that with the free-agent signings they had in July. Along with Geekie, James van Riemsdyk, Patrick Brown, Jesper Boqvist, and Milan Lucic were signed, albeit to short deals and it creates a logjam of veterans. The Bruins’ prospect pool is not very good and was ranked 32nd by The Athletic recently for players 23 years old and young, which is not a good sign if injecting youth is really something they would like to do (from ‘NHL Pipeline Rankings 2023: From the Ducks to the Bruins, the best prospects and under-23 players,’ The Athletic, Aug. 22, 2023). Trent Frederic and Jakub Lauko are back and Lauko is the one that the prospects will have to beat out if they are going to begin the season in the NHL. It’s certainly not out of the question that one makes the team, it’s just going to take a strong camp like McLaughlin had last season.
Bruins Sixth Defenseman: Shattenkirk, Zboril or Lohrei?
Unless a trade or injury happens before the season begins, you can pencil in Charlie McAvoy, Hampus Lindholm, Brandon Carlo, Matt Grzelcyk, and Derek Forbort as the first five defensemen. The sixth defenseman will either be free agent Kevin Shattenkirk, Jakuz Zboril, or prospect Mason Lohrei. Last season Zboril was the seventh defenseman for Montgomery and played in 22 games, but the 13th overall pick in the 2015 Entry Draft found it difficult to crack the roster during the season. This season, despite Connor Clifton leaving in free agency for the Buffalo Sabres, Sweeney signed Shattenkirk as a potential replacement.
A veteran who has plenty of regular season and playoff experience, Shattenkirk will enter camp as the front-runner for the third-pairing spot with Forbort, but things get interesting if Zboril or Lohrei has a strong camp. The wild card in this group is Lohrei as he enters his first pro season out of Ohio State University with an impressive skill set. He is a strong puck-moving blueliner who can play in all situations. A year in the AHL is his most likely destination, however, a strong camp could find him in Boston to begin the season.
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These are going to be some very interesting battles in training camp ahead of the 2023-24 season. For the first time in a long time, there are multiple key positions up for grabs, especially in the top six. There are a lot of free agents and young players that are going to be battling to make a case to get one. This has the chance to be one of the more anticipated camps for the Black and Gold in some time.
