Breaking down Bruins roster entering 2020-21 seasonĭavid Krejci is entering the final year of his contract at 34 years old and had major issues once again generating offense against Tampa after a pretty good overall postseason, and a proud performance scoring a third period goal to send Game 5 into overtime. Torey Krug is set to walk after this season as a high-priced offensive D-man that the Bruins can’t afford to keep with a flat salary cap and future Hall of Famer Zdeno Chara is not what he once was at 43 years old, even if he does decide to return for at least one more year.Ĭhara would only say postgame he’s remaining “open-minded” about his future, but it’s clear he’s a limited role player and a penalty killer even if he does return for another season. They are a team that’s still good, still proud and can still be dominant in spurts with the Perfection Line, a great power play and what was the best goaltending duo in the league.īut they can’t play winning hockey in the playoffs against the Lightning with a group that’s older, less than what they once were and moving toward the end of their contracts. If you can’t do that, then changes need to be made to push the Tampa Bay Lightning much harder because that’s a young, talented team with players like Victor Hedman, Andrei Vasilevskiy, Brayden Point and Nikita Kucherov all in their prime years. The reality is the Bruins have lost twice in the last three postseasons to a division rival that they can’t even push past five games in a seven-game series. In hindsight, it probably slammed shut when they couldn’t close the deal on home ice in Game 7 against the Blues 15 months ago, and it definitely shut tight once the global pandemic struck and siphoned off the momentum after a Presidents' Trophy-winning season. What Krejci is essentially admitting is he can now see the competitive window closing on this current group to win a Stanley Cup. With the pandemic going on, you never know what’s going to happen,” said Krejci, who has his head cast downward for his entire postgame press conference alongside Brad Marchand. “It just kind of hit me after the game that the core group, a few of us, we have one or two, three years left. Why Bruins should not pursue Pierre-Luc Dubois trade with Jets With that in mind, the Bruins had their minds drift to the unknown of the COVID-19 pandemic, the inevitable changes coming to a core Bruins group that’s been together for more than 10 years and the sadness that things can’t go on forever. The Bruins gave it their best shot and fought to get it into overtime with a late third-period goal from David Krejci, but inevitably they bowed to a Tampa Bay team that’s younger, deeper and better in pretty much every way at this point. This was more akin to finally realizing the inevitable, that the B’s window to compete for Stanley Cups with this current group is closed. Bean: Don't blame B's playoff exit on the pandemic That was as raw and emotional as it’s ever been in a postgame Bruins dressing room because they knew it had slipped through their fingers.īut this postseason was different for so many reasons - and with that came a whole different level of emotion for the Boston Bruins after they were finally eliminated in double-overtime in a 3-2 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 5 of their second-round series. The utter shock of the 2010 collapse to the Flyers comes to mind, as does the heartbreak of Boston flatlining in Game 7 of last year’s Stanley Cup Final where the B’s core group was fully aware they had wasted their best chance to win another Cup. There have been some doozies over the years, of course. There is always some sadness tinged in with regret, and maybe even a little denial, when a hockey season has freshly ended for the Bruins in playoff defeat.
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