Bruce Cassidy weighs in on Bruins’ roster

The Bruins still have some work to do with RFA Jake DeBrusk unsigned and the status of captain Zdeno Chara remains up in the air. There are some intriguing UFAs available and there is little doubt that GM Don Sweeney is monitoring the trade market.

But it’s quite possible that there will be no more major acquisitions before the upcoming season. So in this to-infinity-and-beyond offseason, now seems as good a time as any to check in with Jack Adams Award-winning coach Bruce Cassidy and get his take on his roster.

Cassidy — it should come as little surprise to anyone who has listened to his glass-half-full approach in his three-plus seasons — thinks the B’s as constituted can still be a Stanley Cup contender. But he readily concedes that there are a few major “ifs” on the back end.

While Chara is still a question mark, Cassidy knows he’ll have to replace Torey Krug, the second pair left defenseman and power-play quarterback from whom you could expect a yearly 50-point output.

There are different options on the power play. Cassidy could use Charlie McAvoy on the top unit. He could go with five forwards. But the most seamless replacement for Krug would be left-shooting Matt Grzelcyk.

“He’s not Torey, as far as where his game is on the power play, but given that opportunity, we’ll see how much he can close that gap,” Cassidy said Tuesday.

The coach said that if he’s to approach Krug’s power-play success, Grzelcyk needs to become even more of a thinking man’s player, to be able to quickly go down his checklist of options and responsibilities.

“That’s the part we’ve got to educate Griz on,” said Cassidy. “He’s got to take to it as well and he has to be a little more of a student of the game when it comes to that stuff if he wants to run it every night. And Torey was excellent at that. He knew what was coming. He studied it. At the meetings he asked questions. He was a guy that took to the playbook more than the others guys because he had the puck more. That’s what we’re going to need out of Griz.”

But beyond the PP, they’ll be playing one, possibly two (if Chara dos not return) defensemen on the left side who don’t have extensive NHL experience. Before he struggled in bubble play, Jeremy Lauzon played well on the right side. It stands to reason that his game would improve not only with that experience, but also if he moved to his natural left side.

The development of Jakub Zboril, the 2015 first round pick (13th overall) who recently signed a two-year, one-way extension, has taken time. But Cassidy, while conceding he doesn’t know the Czech League well, has liked what he’s seen from the couple of games he’s played.

“I saw a guy that was very positionally sound, he was engaged in the game, he competed physically, good first touches on the breakout, good transitions. We knew he had some of those transition plays,” said Cassidy. “I like the fact that he was competitive. To me he looked comfortable on left or right, he was not reckless at all and was in position at all times, which was good. It means he was engaged in the game. One of the problems with Jake early was sometimes he got caught drifting around and kind of lost focus as a young guy. And you know how that works out here. You get exposed. You might get away with it down there but not as much up here.”

Urho Vaakanainen will also be in the mix competitively, especially if the B’s lose both Krug and Chara. Cassidy said he’ll need his more experienced right side to step up, with Charlie McAvoy and Brandon Carlo needing to make their move into leadership roles. And if Kevan Miller can put his knee woes behind him, that will fill another void. He also feels that the team’s strength down the middle can mitigate the lack of experience on the back end.

But the bottom line is the B’s need young, untested players to come through.

“It’s kind of like a couple of years ago when we gave some of those forwards (DeBrusk, Sean Kuraly, Anders Bjork) a look and they did well for us. That’s where we are right now on the back end,” said Cassidy, who didn’t rule out veteran John Moore playing a role.

Goaltending can also cover up a few blemishes, and the tandem of Tuukka Rask and Jaroslav Halak was the best in the business last season. Cassidy is banking on that to be the case again, despite many fans’ issues with Rask leaving the bubble to tend to a family situation.

“I’ve texted him a couple of times and his family is good, so that’s great,” said Cassidy. “I think what the players are looking for is a guy who goes in the net and gives us a chance to win every night and gives us a chance to be a Stanley Cup contender and hopefully a favorite. And that’s how they’ll judge him — if he stops the puck and competes hard and gives us a chance to win, not what happened last year.”

Up front, Sweeney made a solid acquisition in strong, shoot-first right wing Craig Smith, a move Cassidy endorsed. While there are different options for Smith, especially at the start of the season when the B’s could be without both Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak (both recovering from offseason surgery), Cassidy expects to give Smith a long look with Charlie Coyle for what would make two-thirds of a heavy power line.

The third guy on that line would be a competition between Anders Bjork and Nick Ritchie. There were a couple of nights after he was obtained at the deadline that Ritchie looked like the big, nasty presence the B’s were seeking. But there were other nights he looked like a lumbering relic of yesteryear. As with Ondrej Kase, Cassidy is looking for a bigger sample size to make a judgment.

“Nick needs to be able to keep pace with the game now without trying to be something that he’s not,” said Cassidy. “He’s not all of a sudden going to be flying up the wing. He’s not going to be able to skate like DeBrusk. That’s not happening. But he’ll have to keep his pace up and some of that will be conditioning. He’s been around the group. So he knows it’s like, ‘Hey, get to a spot where you can play X amount of minutes, whether it’s 12, 13, 14.”

All things considered, Cassidy believes the B’s can be right back to where they were, slugging it out with the NHL’s elite.

“We’re strong,” said Cassidy. “We’ve improved our forward group. People are talking about the surgeries and that’s legitimate, but from what I understand, those surgeries have been done to a lot of different players in the past and they’ve come out of it better. So the timeline, because they’re hard working guys, they’ll be on time or maybe a little early because they work so hard. And I like the Craig Smith addition a lot. I think he fills a void. Kase and Ritchie will have fresh starts and we’ll see how they do. We lose (Joakim Nordstrom), so that hurts because he’s a good, solid guy, but it may be an opportunity for a (Anton) Blidh or a (Trent) Frederic to push through … there should be good healthy competition. There’s good depth up front. And the goaltending will be solid. I believe that the question will be on the back end and can the young guys handle the workload. We’ve talked about that internally. We like those guys. We’ve got two first-rounders and a second-round pick that have played two to three years in Providence or Boston and they’ve played well. To what degree are they ready to push, we’ll see.”

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3oCF3Mi