Burning Questions Ahead of the 2014-15 Boston Bruins Season

The Boston Bruins will end an exact 21-week fast from meaningful hockey action at the TD Garden with Wednesday night’s 2014-15 season opener.

Characteristically, there was not much of a quantitative personnel overhaul in the intervening offseason. As many as 15 skaters who took part in Boston’s Game 7 downfall against the Montreal Canadiens in May will join defending Vezina Trophy recipient Tuukka Rask on the clean sheet. That is not even accounting for those who were healthy or injured scratches for that contest.

But the Bruins bear a deceptively lightly ruffled roster going into Wednesday’s tilt with the Philadelphia Flyers. A top-tier winger and top-four defenseman from the previous run have new NHL employers, and the minute-munching all-around anchor has long-term stamina issues.

Those developments and residual circumstances leave the Bruins with a multilayered question of quality to take into the 2014-15 campaign. In addition, there are mainstays personifying the club’s collective craving for redemption after letting a superficially superior regular season wilt in the form of a half-empty postseason.

The following four slides expand on each of these points by posing the four topmost questions as the preseason mutates into meaningful action this week.

Unless otherwise indicated, all statistics and roster information for this report were found via bruins.nhl.com

Can Eriksson Click on the Top Line?

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Before joining the Bruins a year ago, Loui Eriksson was a bona fide top-liner in Dallas. He switched crests on the heels of four 25-goal, three 40-assist and three 70-point campaigns.

A combination of iffy adjustment and multiple concussions, however, brought on a false start to his Boston tenure in 2013-14. He would downgrade to middle-tier status on the depth chart, miss 21 games and muster a mere 10-27-37 scoring log.

In the wake of fellow right wing Jarome Iginla’s exit via free agency, Eriksson will need to kick ample ice chips over the memories of his previous season. Though it may be by default, he is the most seasoned and proven Bruin in his position.

Due to an injury to top left wing Milan Lucic, Eriksson did not see much preseason action with the two first-line incumbents. But when the wingers in question did start teaming up to flank David Krejci, the reviews were cautiously promising at best.

Per Matt Kalman of CBS Boston, after last Tuesday’s tilt with the New York Islanders, head coach Claude Julien offered:

"

…they were just OK. I don’t think they were a dominant line tonight and so it was probably hard to assess as far as will that line work or not. But definitely we need to see them play a little bit better and hopefully as camp progresses that’s going to happen.

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In fairness, Lucic may still need to replenish his rhythm. But Eriksson cannot hesitate to pursue a redress in his second autumn in New England.

Can They Conserve the Captain?

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Now that they have dealt Johnny Boychuk, the Bruins are down one effective veteran defenseman. This broadens the share of exemplary leadership responsibilities between Zdeno Chara, Dennis Seidenberg and Adam McQuaid.

That may be more than the 37-year-old Chara can handle in his ninth season as Boston’s formal captain. The team’s last two playoff-series losses have yielded ample evidence that he could stand to shave his minutes over the course of the season.

Both coming off injury-riddled 2013-14 campaigns, McQuaid and Seidenberg will need nearly impeccable durability to make occasional breathers practical for Chara. The relationship between those storylines is strong enough that this slide could pose a two-in-one question, the other half being, “Can the defensive veterans stay healthy?”

Another crucial variable will be the collective dependability of the four other defenders still on Boston’s NHL roster. Giving Chara a few sporadic and advisable nights off would naturally entail dressing that young quartet along with McQuaid and Seidenberg.

How young is that quartet? They are all under the age of 27 and have each played no more than a combined 125 regular-season and postseason games at the top level.

More on that later, because the blue line is not the Bruins’ only area with a streak of green.

Can Marchand Bounce Back?

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Eriksson is not the only top-six winger itching for a better fall in 2014. Rising fifth-year Boston veteran Brad Marchand is coming off a career nadir of his own.

It might not breach the surface of the stat sheet given his 25 goals and career-high 28 assists in the regular season. But a rocky autumn and an arid postseason sandwiched Marchand’s prosperous winter with two slices of musty white bread.

By the 13-game mark of 2013-14, roughly one-sixth of the way through the regular season, Marchand had one goal, three helpers and a minus-five rating. He had given way to Reilly Smith and temporarily taken shifts on one of the lower lines.

Additional dry spells struck in the playoffs when he failed to tune the opposing mesh in any of 12 outings. He went pointless altogether through the five-game first round, mustered five assists in a three-game bunch and then fell mute for the last four contests of the second round.

The encouraging news for Bruins buffs stems from Julien’s assessment of the year-to-year contrast in Marchand’s preparation. As quoted by Nicholas Goss of nesn.com, the bench boss recently said, first referring to the previous season:

"

I don’t think he trained properly for hockey. His cardio wasn’t the greatest. The whole year he just struggled with it. This year he seems a lot better, he seems to have more endurance out there. His shifts are much better because of it.

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Add the fact that Marchand and the aforementioned Smith, who came to constitute Patrice Bergeron’s second-line wingers in the middle of last season, return knowing who they can expect to work with.

With all that in mind, Marchand should be entitled to more confidence. That, in turn, should amount to more consistency with a shelf life of seven months or more.

How Fast Can the Young Core Grow?

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A dense smattering of skaters with the potential for regular roster placement are 26 years of age or younger and have less than two full-length seasons of NHL experience.

As of Monday, forwards Craig Cunningham, Matt Fraser, David Pastrnak, Reilly Smith and Ryan Spooner are all in the mix. Ditto for defensemen Matt Bartkowski, Dougie Hamilton, Torey Krug and Kevan Miller.

At least three of those blueliners and two of those strikers will be in action on any given game night. Fraser, Smith, Hamilton, Krug and Miller all look to be locks on that front, but a few more could enter at any time for a variety of reasons.

Regardless of who constitutes the cluster, these relatively unripe players will be the key to giving Boston the depth that defines every contender. Similarly, 25-year-old backup goaltender Niklas Svedberg will need to assimilate without delay after garnering only one NHL appearance prior to this season.

Svedberg and the four defensemen will be especially important for the sake of confidently giving Chara and Rask adequate rest amid the 82-game grind. Anything short of that could jeopardize the Bruins’ aspirations to surpass the halfway mark of the 2015 playoffs.