Retool or rebuild? Cam Neely & Bruins will weigh both options when charting a course for this pivotal offseason

On paper, there’s still an awful lot to like about the 2020-21 Boston Bruins.

Despite their showing in the Eastern Conference Semifinals against a wagon of a Lightning team up in the Toronto bubble, Boston’s established veteran core and a slew of young talent offers a strong foundation for which Don Sweeney and the organization’s upper management can build upon. 

Yes, the potential departure of Torey Krug and another year around the sun for the likes of Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci loom large entering a new campaign. 

But the case could be made that this core — if aided by the injection of a legitimate top-six talent and supplemented by the continued strides of youngsters like Charlie McAvoy, Jake DeBrusk, Brandon Carlo and others — still has at least one more legitimate shot at the Cup before hard questions must be asked about the future of this roster. 

Putting this talented — albeit flawed — roster over the top in hopes of one more deep run with the likes of Bergeron, Krejci and potentially Zdeno Chara leading the way would likely be the amenable course for many, especially given the evident talent still present with this team. 

Amenable? Yes. Preferred? Yes.

But for Cam Neely and the Bruins' top brass, the true burden of this offseason may not be the challenge involved with putting the pieces in place to orchestrate another run. Rather, it might be coming to terms with the fact that reloading on the fly — and offering the promise of playoff hockey deep into the spring and summer of 2021 — might not be the most realistic course of action for this Original Six franchise.



"It does play a factor,” Neely said of weighing the age of Boston’s veteran core when it comes to formulating a gameplan for this offseason. "We’ve got some guys that have played a lot of good hockey for us, a lot of years for us. Their careers are somewhat winding down and we have to really take a hard look at where we are as an organization. Can we compete for a Stanley Cup, and if we can, what do we have to do to our roster to do that?

"So, we have to really be honest with ourselves in assessing our team and assessing our players in the organization. See where we’re going to – where we think we really are going to be. I mean, if we have to be as honest – as brutally honest as possible about where we think we’re going to be in the next couple years and we have to react accordingly to that."

Leaving no stone unturned when it comes to evaluating options for what could be a transformative offseason for Boston is simply due diligence on the part of Neely, Sweeney and others.

With some cap flexibility and the assets available to jump headfirst into an active trade market, Boston certainly has the means to contend again in 2021, with a potential reset forecasted for the following season when both Krejci and Rask's contracts come off the books the following season. But other factors can cloud the optimism that the 2020-21 season could bring for a Bruins club that looked like the Cup favorites had the COVID-19 pandemic not struck.

Boston's willingness to add a bonafide top-six weapon might be lessened if Neely and Co. truly believe this core doesn't have enough to get over the hump, especially against the likes of the Lightning — who, even after potentially dealing away some key cogs this fall to remain under the flat cap — should still return next year with the likes of Brayden Point, Nikita Kucherov, Andrei Vasilevskiy and others still in tow.

Of course, basing your decision about charting a new course for your franchise off of a disappointing showing up in the bubble could be a double-edged sword.

Playing the "what if" game shouldn't be the method in which you exactly evaluate the state of your organization, and yes, Boston needs to augment its roster in order to topple the Lightning going forward. But Neely did note that he could have been singing another tune had this whole season not been turned on its head back in March — back when Boston was rolling and a discombobulated Tampa team that was 3-6-1 in its last nine games ahead of the pause.

Add in the fact that Boston was without its No. 1 netminder for that Tampa series, and the final verdict when it comes to the B's inability to punch its ticket back to the Cup Final this summer might not be as cut and dry as most season evaluations typically are.

"I have to weigh – and I think we all have to weigh  —what our regular season was prior to the pause and then what happened at training camp, missing our two top right wingers couldn’t work on the power play because of that. Or couldn’t work on it effectively because of that," Neely said. "Some guys were not 100% during the playoffs. You have to look at that as well. We lost Tuukka, so that’s a factor.

"I think losing your number one goaltender in the playoffs is probably the toughest position to lose. I’m not taking anything away from Jaro, but that’s just the facts. I think we have to look at all those things and really assess properly and not be reactionary to what happened the last series. We have to keep in mind and be open and honest about what we looked like against Tampa."

If there's one thing that all parties — both re-toolers and rebuilders —  can agree on, it's this: The Bruins' best shot at hoisting another Cup with their current core in place came last June against St. Louis. There's no ignoring that. Any subsequent attempts to get back to that spot were always going to be feature a much tougher road.

But now, Neely, Sweeney and the rest of Boston's front office must determine whether such a road is worth taking again in 2021.

"We’ve certainly had a lot of conversations in the bubble," Neely said of discussing the future of the franchise. "A lot of time to have hockey talk, for sure. And then, we have to be careful too because we have to look at the regular season we had prior to the pause was so far different than we played prior to the postseason. We also have to recognize the team that beat us and see where we stack up against those elite teams in the league, which I felt we were one of those elite teams this year. But, we’re going to start December, January, now we’re talking another four, five months off. How are we going to play?

"How are we going to react to that? What does that season look like? There are all these questions still unanswered right now. That doesn’t mean that we can’t take a hard look at our roster and our organization and see where we should be going for this next year or two. That’s what my message has been, is lets really take a look and see where we’re going to be. Can we compete for the Stanley Cup and if everyone feels we can compete for the Stanley Cup, what do we have to do to get back to that final twosome and have a legitimate shot to win?"