There have been questions this offseason surrounding the Boston Bruins and how they’ll configure their lines heading into the 2023-24 season. This was accentuated when both Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci opted to hang up their skates and retire this offseason, leaving the Bruins with Pavel Zacha and Charlie Coyle as the team’s top two center options.
For many, the drop-off in talent from Bergeron and Krejci to Zacha and Coyle was a stark one that, coupled with other notable changes to the Bruins’ roster this offseason, would immediately turn the Bruins from contenders to pretenders.
It’s undeniable that this team will be worse than its predecessor from the previous season. Realistically, expecting the same or better performance as the 2022-23 Bruins, who had a historic season that cultivated in the most wins and points in a single NHL season, would have been unreasonable. This, however, doesn’t imply that the Bruins will immediately become “bad” as a result of these changes.
Bruins’ head coach Jim Montgomery recently discussed the distinctions between the 2022-23 squad and the team he is leading into the 2023-24 season in an interview with Steve Conroy of the Boston Herald.
“We lost a lot of leadership. Fortunately, this team is filled with leadership,” Montgomery said. “We have to make sure — and this is a big part of my job — that our standard of how we treat ourselves, how we care for each other remains the same. We can’t let our standard of competitiveness and caring slip. And that’s probably my biggest thing to make sure of this year, besides getting people to execute with pace and purpose.”
This season will present Montgomery with a much different set of challenges than he faced a season ago. In his first season as the head coach of the Bruins, Montgomery got everybody to buy in and play as a unit. This, combined with the team’s pre-existing chemistry and leadership, led to a historic regular season. This time around, the core has undergone such substantial changes that new players must now step up.
Related: Bruins’ Montgomery Facing Challenging Second Season
“After our regular season, I think a lot of people forgot all the question marks on our team before last year. I think it’s very similar to this year, that we’re a bubble team, and that’s what people were saying about us last year,” said Montgomery. “What I like is we have a tremendous opportunity. I know we have great players, I know we have really good leaders. For me, the exciting part of it is ‘how good can we be?’ I don’t know what our ceiling is yet and that’s what makes this training camp a little more exciting than last year’s because there’s a lot more moving parts … some people look at it as daunting. I don’t. I look at it as an opportunity for a lot of players to become real good Bruins for us and for us to find our identity as a team and how we’re going to win games this year.”
Montgomery’s perspective is positive, but it doesn’t feel like mere lip service. Instead, it reflects a level-headed head coach who trusts in his team and wants the world to recognize that the Bruins are not content with being an afterthought. This statement was good for the fans, the media and especially the team who received a public vote of confidence from their leader.
Zacha Receives Praise From Montgomery
One player who garnered considerable praise for his performance and potential is Zacha.
“I think (Zacha’s ceiling) is significantly higher,” Montgomery said of Zacha and his breakout from last season. “Not only is he physically prepared, more importantly I believe he’s ready for this mentally for the kind of minutes, the responsibility of having to be played in all situations — which he did really well last year — but they’re going to be more important minutes. But I just think he’s mentally ready. He believes that he can do it. That’s the biggest step for a player. I have a lot of confidence that our top two lines will be very good because I believe Charlie Coyle knows he can do the job and will do the job and Pavel Zacha does too.”
Zacha saw his fair share of struggles in his early days in the NHL. This didn’t come without criticism as Zacha was the sixth-overall selection in the 2015 NHL Entry Draft. Though there were flashes, he never fully put it all together as a member of the New Jersey Devils, peaking with 17 goals and 35 points in 50 games during the 2020-21 season. Though he achieved a then-career-high of 36 points in his final season with the Devils just a year later, he regressed with only 15 goals that season and did so in 70 games, 20 more than he played in the season prior.
Fast forward to his first season in Boston and Zacha would completely change the narrative surrounding his career. Playing in more than 70 games for the first time, Zacha would actually skate in all 82 regular season and all seven postseason contests for the Bruins. He’d record a career-high 21 goals, 36 assists and 57 points while playing primarily on the team’s second line alongside David Krejci and David Pastrnak.
Though Zacha saw the majority of his action as a winger last season, his chemistry with Pastrnak and experience learning from Krejci should not be discounted heading into the 2023-24 season. Instead, it should be highlighted given that Montgomery truly believes that the 26-year-old forward can be an impact player in his new role with the club. Adding responsibility can sometimes create insurmountable pressure for a player. In other cases, it can motivate a player to step up and produce in a way that wasn’t previously thought possible.
So far, Zacha has shown the latter, rather than the former.
This season is going to be an interesting one for all parties involved in Boston. Zacha has received a major vote of confidence from Montgomery and he seems primed to step up now that he’s being given such a crucial role with the team.