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The Boston Bruins are a month and a half away from the start of their 2016-17 season.
It’s been a weird two-year odyssey in Boston, too. Emphasis on the ‘odd’ in there, too. Although the Black and Gold have remained a competitive bunch, the team has found ways to crumble out of postseason play on the final day of the regular season for two consecutive seasons. It’s entirely possible that those B’s teams could have contended in the Eastern Conference in those respective seasons, too, which made those just-misses all the more frustrating for an always antsy fandom.
General manager
Don Sweeney could have blown it up. Instead, the second-year GM added to his core with the signing of
David Backes to a five-year, $30 million contract. But Backes doesn’t necessarily address Boston’s biggest need, which remains on their rather thin backend. Still.
It’s been two years since the Bruins were forced to trade
Johnny Boychuk to the New York Islanders for peanuts and maybe the Billy Joel banner from the Nassau Coliseum (nine sold out shows during his 1998 World Tour! Nine!). And it’s been one year since
Dougie Hamilton basically refused to re-sign with the Bruins and instead took his talents to Calgary via trade. The organization seems to believe that they’ve found answers in this area tomorrow -- be it 2015 first-rounder Jakub Zboril or 2016 first-rounder Charlie McAvoy -- but that’s then, and this now.
And without a trade anything close to imminent (though some pretty,
prettaay good options remain out there with unsigned restricted free agents like Winnipeg’s Jacob Trouba and Anaheim’s Hampus Lindholm), this seems likely to be the defensive group the Bruins will trudge out there in an attempt to end a two-year playoff drought -- their first since 2005 to 2007 -- and work with the names on their NHL roster, and those a touch below it, for the second straight season.
By now, you know the names. The Bruins are still led by their 39-year-old captain of 11 years,
Zdeno Chara. Behind Chara, there’s
Torey Krug,
John-Michael Liles,
Adam McQuaid, and
Kevan Miller. Then there’s upstart youngsters
Colin Miller and
Joe Morrow. You could throw 2015 second-round pick
Brandon Carlo, who skated in eight games (seven regular season and one postseason tilt) for the Providence Bruins a year ago, but the 6-foot-5 defender would be the greenest of the group.
So what would be your ideal pairings to begin the year look like?
Start at the top: it’s obvious that Chara, even approaching 40, is still the best d-man the Bruins have in their lineup. But he does need help. While Chara is still a player you can rely on for the tough one-on-ones with some of the league’s best -- Big Z averaged 24:05 of time on ice in 2015-16, 20th most among NHL defensemen -- it’s clear that he needs stronger support on the right side. Or a consistent pairing partner at the very least. The Bruins often rotated just about everyone they could next to Chara throughout the year, and it was Kevan Miller that was left to be frequently overexposed in a top-pairing role opposite Chara. That led to a heavy-yet-somewhat-wrongful thumbs down on a year with career highs in every single category -- goals, points, hits, blocked shots, etc. -- from Miller.
Kevan Miller, at his best, is a serviceable option as your team’s fourth, fifth, or perhaps sixth, defenseman, and is at this best opposite a puck-mover like a Krug or Morrow. But in the first year of a four-year, $10 million contract extension signed this past summer, it’s fair to expect No. 86 to be among Boston’s right-side rotation that could put he and McQuaid next to all of Chara, Krug, Liles, and Morrow depending on the injury situation, matchup, the moon, and everything in between.
Those are the questions that everyone asks and people are wondering about, but at the same time, I think there’s a chance for both of us to continue to improve our game and hopefully be more well-rounded and grab the opportunity to play bigger minutes against tougher opposition and stuff,” McQuaid told
WEEI.com last month when asked about their defensive game moving forward.
So, with all that in mind, that top-pairing spot is one I give to Colin Miller.
“Whoa, you’re giving a premier spot against some of the league’s best on a night-in, night-out basis to a second-year NHLer?!” you’re thinking. And the answer is absolutely. When it comes to Miller, the Bruins are in a position where they need to figure out what they have in the player. They will never quite know what that is if he’s relegated to part-time NHL duty as a seventh defenseman or on the bottom-pairing for an entire season. There’s without doubt tremendous upside in Miller’s NHL game, too, so to see what he has while also putting him Boston’s best veteran presence, would be an easy decision. The Bruins tried this a year ago, as Miller spent nearly 300 minutes with
Dennis Seidenberg, who was bought out by the Bruins this summer, as his partner at five-on-five play.
Behind Seidenberg, Miller played with Chara as his second-most common pairing partner (195:48 of five-on-five time-on-ice together), and together the group put up a 52.9% Corsi-For percentage. Miller also had success with Liles, but with just 21 minutes together, you’d need to see a larger sample.
On the second pairing, Krug’s new contract tells you that the Bruins believe he’s a top-four player, and there’s really nothing in his overall progression that should lead you to believe otherwise. Even with a dinged up shoulder, Krug set a career in assists (40) and points (44) en route to a four-year, $21 million dollar extension with the club. When Krug sets goals for himself, he makes them. He’s also become a definite voice in the Boston locker room, and that should only improve in 2016-17.
Putting him with Krug on Boston’s second-pairing seems like the easy call. That would leave you with a third-pairing featuring Liles and McQuaid, a veteran-heavy pairing that really comes with the smarts and experience that could work some wonders against some weaker competition.
But this also gives the Bruins a true second-pairing type feel with Liles, who was great at the little things that often go overlooked in his post-deadline stint with the Black and Gold, and McQuaid not far off from Krug and Miller in terms of the impact they could have in the right situations.
Which is all the Bruins can do their best to manage as they give it another go with this group.
Ty Anderson has been covering the National Hockey League for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010, can be read in the New England Hockey Journal magazine, has been a member of the Pro Hockey Writers Association's Boston Chapter since 2013. Ty can be contacted on Twitter, or emailed at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com.
Boston Bruins Blogger •Bruins Feature Columnist • 
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