Does Bruce Cassidy feel as though the Bruins need to add a piece this month? ‘At times’

Bruce Cassidy wasn’t breaking any new ground when asked about potential areas of the roster where the Bruins could use a lift ahead of the Feb. 25 trade deadline.

On paper, the Bruins have at least one dominant forward line in Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak — while recent shuffling that has rolled Danton Heinen up in a top-six role and slotted David Krejci with Pastrnak has been encouraging.

In the bottom six, Boston has found a go-to group in Noel Acciari, Chris Wagner and Sean Kuraly — a trio that has generated a 53.94 CF% while providing a physical matchup against an opposing top-six line.

“I know what I’m getting out of that group every night,” Cassidy said. “We’re getting physicality, I can trust them against good players. The scoring has been hot and cold. I think they got hot there for a while … And that part is okay. We’re not banging our head against the wall for them to score every night. We do want the physicality, we do want the penalty kill, we want the challenge of them playing against top players when we go away from Bergy’s line.”

However, Boston’s third line has been a different story. Since Riley Nash departed in free agency, Boston has struggled to find a consistent replacement at the pivot — while options on the wing have also shuffled between depth options, Providence call-ups and other young players mired in sophomore slumps.

While Boston was able to roll out a trio of Nash, David Backes and Heinen for a good portion of the 2017-18 season (330 5v5 TOI together), Cassidy hasn’t had the same luxury this year — with centers such as Kuraly, Jakob Forsbacka Karlsson, Colby Cave, Trent Frederic and more all getting spins. On the wing, Ryan Donato has needed more seasoning down in Providence and Anders Bjork is out for the season — creating a hole that was expected to be filled by the development of another NHL-caliber prospect.

“The third line – we’ve used young skill, Donato, JFK, Heinen," Cassidy said. "For stretches, they were good and then we go on the road and maybe they get exposed a little more, maybe I didn’t trust them enough, maybe they weren’t good enough.”

“I do believe that’s the challenge for me, is trying to get that third line, we’ll label it that, consistent every night, knowing what we’re going to get and them knowing who they’re playing with,” he added. “I’ve said that, too, I’m as much as fault as anybody moving pieces around, but I think there’s a reason for that. Usually, if that’s happening, I’m not 100 percent content with what we’re seeing and want more.”

For a Bruins team that ranks 27th in the league in 5v5 goals, the writing is on the wall for an upgrade on that third line. While Cassidy noted that Boston has started to generate more offense over the past week (11 goals in last three games), he did acknowledge that his club has fallen on the wrong side of one-goal games for most of the year.

So could the Bruins use another scoring option up front?

“At times,” Cassidy said. “Listen, when you answer that question — you’ve got to be careful, because I don’t want to be disrespectful to our group. But yes, there’s times we seem to fall a goal short, so we could use that extra punch. The last two games, we’ve got offense. Third-line center, I do believe, we’ve been looking at different options at all year. So to have a consistent guy in there every night would probably make it easier on everybody, so yes, there’s days it looks like we could use a piece.

“But other days, we’ve played very well with the group we have. So at the end of the day, that’s going to be their call. I’m not skirting the question, I just think that’s kind of up to Donny (Sweeney) to go out and see what’s available and what the cost is and make the appropriate call. But you can always use depth and like I said, if he can make out lineup better, I’m all for it.”