Team: 2024-25 Boston Bruins

Initial Creation Date: May 13, 2024

Published: May 13, 2024

Salary Cap Mode: Basic

First off, the team is clearly a bunch of 3rd liners and fringe second liners that are just overmatched. That's not the players fault, it's just the reality of their drafting and cap situation this year. Luckily, they'll have money to spend this offseason to fix it.

An Ullmark trade feels inevitable, and I think a late first rounder or early second rounder is about his value. Ironically, let's send him to Ottawa for the Bruins own first rounder this year. Who knows who he'd accept a trade to, so this is fairly interchangeable.

Since they have a full roster of roughly middle 6 forwards plus Pastrnak, this means they need to add top 6 players, but I'm getting ahead of myself. It doesn't make sense just to push the current third line to fourth line, fourth to scratch, etc., so one or two of the current roster players should be traded. I think Geekie is the first candidate, since he's not very effective at center, but too good to play on the fourth line. He's a solid 3rw option, but Lysell is a safer bet to be ready, and he saves you over 1m in cap space. Low risk. Absolute worst case, Brazeau can fit in there for now. Not ideal, but it's also not the end of the world. Nothing is perfect, and 3rw is least of this teams concerns. Geekie to (insert team here) for a mid round pick.

With all that said, Zacha and Coyle are likely best as 3lw and 3c respectively. They're good regular season players, but Coyle has always been best as a great 3c instead of a subpar 2c, and Zacha isn't a playoff caliber player, 0 goals in 20+ playoff games now. I'd keep him around, but limit his role because it almost certainly will be/need to be come playoffs.

That leaves us with 3 top 6 forwards. Pastrnak of course is one, Marchand is two, then Poitras. Pasta is obvious, not gonna expand on that. Marchand is probably best as a 2lw as this stage of his career, it's not like they're paying him 10m to be a first liner anyways, so I'd rather keep him a little more fresh without wearing him out. Still first line upside if needed. Poitras may not be quite ready to be a 2c, but let's be real, he's not far off, and Zacha/Coyle have a far lower ceiling than Poitras. He responds very well to challenges, so as long as the team can get a reliable center to play above him, I'm absolutely ok with him being 2c. Again, nothing is perfect and centers don't grow on trees. I'm fairly comfortable with this though. Plus Zacha and Coyle are there if needed.

So the team needs a 1lw and a 1c, and a 4lw.

4lw is easy, sign a free agent or plug in Lauko, or another prospect like Kuntar or Merkulov. Limited minutes so not a big concern. Wouldn't be opposed to bringing Maroon back either.

For 1c, there's one clear option, Elias Lindholm. Barring a trade that might involve Ullmark + picks and prospects for a 1c (highly unlikely because let's be real... nobody is available), we should anticipate this move, and probably a slight overpay. Let's sign him to a 7x7.

Now that that's out of the way, the team needs a goalie, Swayman seems cool, let's sign him to a twin 7x7. Bussi is a moderate risk for a backup, but Swayman is good enough to offset that, and the B's goalie development is very reliable. I'm good with this as another risk, so let's sign him to a 2x800k.

Now for the forward core, this is where it gets more interesting. Lysell, unless traded, fits nicely at 3rw. With Poitras starting at 2c, I'd put Frederic with him for a veteran presence, and put Lysell with Coyle and Zacha, which provides the same to Lysell, and splits up the rookie and sophomore.

1lw is still a position of need, and I would love to see them get someone like Guentzel. This is fairly risky since they'll now be singing 2 29 year old FAs to 7 year deals, which would probably age poorly, but it might need to be done. The first 4 years would be worth it. Ultimately, I still think they should resign Debrusk, so I'd prefer to see a more affordable option, like Teravainen, to something like a 5x6.5 deal. He might get more $ elsewhere though, who knows. We'll see.

And with the remaining money, I'd strongly consider resigning Debrusk. His value is probably right around 5m, a 5x5 like Barbashev isn't a bad comparable. 5x5.5 is fair.

And that is all. Not quite a contender imo, but this is much better than this year.

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