Is the Boston Bruins' Blue Line Good Enough Without Zdeno Chara?

The Boston Bruins’ defence has been taking a lot of hits lately.

At least one of the hits—the highly suspect trade of Johnny Boychuk to the New York Islanders—was self-inflicted, but the majority of the damage has been dealt by injuries. A little over a week ago, Boston announced that Kevan Miller would be out indefinitely with a dislocated shoulder.

A few days later, the Bruins revealed that team captain Zdeno Chara would miss a month or so of action thanks to a knee injury. Then on Wednesday, Torey Krug joined the club thanks to a broken finger that is expected to cost Boston his services for two or three weeks.    

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In less than a month, one of the most formidable defensive teams in the game of hockey has been brought to its knees. Any team would suffer from the loss of two top-four defenceman and a serviceable depth player, but the loss of Chara is even another level of serious.

“[Chara] controls a game,” Minnesota’s Zach Parise told the Boston Globe’s Fluto Shinzawa after a Wild win over the Bruins. “I know personally I’ve been matched up against him quite a bit playing in New Jersey. He just makes such a difference out there. He plays 30 minutes, all situations. It’s a tough hole to fill. Any team, if you lose your No. 1 defenseman, it’s going to hurt.”

What do the Bruins have left?

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A 21-year-old Dougie Hamilton is the closest thing the team has to a No. 1 defenceman at the moment. The right-shooting Hamilton plays on the power play and the penalty kill and skates miles and miles at even-strength.

Over his past seven games, he’s topped 22 minutes per night; Tuesday against Minnesota, he hit a season-high 28:32. Coach Claude Julien told the Providence Journal’s Mark Divver that he was really happy with Hamilton’s progress; it’s worth noting too that the defenceman has been a Corsi star since day one. Despite his youth, he’s a decent stopgap.

Dennis Seidenberg isn’t exactly stepping out of his comfort zone, either. He’s routinely logged piles of minutes on the Boston blue line—he averaged three seconds less per game at even-strength in 2013-14 than Chara did—and should be reliable in a top-pair role alongside Hamilton.  

The real problems start not much farther down the roster.

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Third-pairing defenceman Adam McQuaid is the best bet of the players remaining to step up into a top-four role. His game has some limitations (speed, offence), but he’s big, strong and experienced. He’s averaging just a little under 20 minutes per game at the moment, nearly four minutes more per night than last season, and while he’s slotted a little higher in the order than he should be, he’s the last healthy bona fide NHL defenceman on the team.

Ideally, Matt Bartkowski would be able to step up and help shoulder the load, but things have not gone well lately for the 26-year-old. In Wednesday’s loss to Minnesota (in which Boston blew a 3-1 lead), he bobbled the puck on the Wild’s first goal and then abandoned the front of the net on the game-tying goal:

It’s not hard to figure out what the coaching staff saw on that play; Bartkowski didn’t get another shift in the 13-plus minutes left in the game, and he finished the night having played less than nine minutes overall. It’s not at all far-fetched to imagine him being passed on the depth chart in short order by one of the minor league defencemen that the Bruins have recalled.

The first of the call-ups was Zach Trotman, the very last player (No. 210 overall) picked in the 2010 draft; he was an over-age selection who had been passed over in two previous years of eligibility. In the four years since, he’s become progressively better, first in college and then the AHL, even earning a brief NHL recall in 2013-14.

The 6’3”, 219-pound right-shooting defenceman combines size with puck-moving ability and was used in all situations in the minors; he’s likely to be a fixture on the right side of the third pairing as long as the usual occupant (McQuaid) is playing higher on the depth chart.

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Joe Morrow is the most famous of the Bruins’ two Wednesday recalls; he was a first-round pick of Pittsburgh in 2011 and bounced to Dallas and then finally to Boston in the Tyler Seguin trade. An offensive defenceman, he had some struggles adjusting to professional hockey, as he explained to The Hockey News while he was still with the Penguins organization.

“In the four years I played junior hockey, I guess, no one taught me how to play defence properly,” he said of his years in Portland (WHL) under now-Pittsburgh coach Mike Johnston. “I was more of a guy who would get out there on the power play, score a goal and you’re fine.”  

Obviously, the Bruins must be happy with Morrow’s progression in that department; they still have Chris Breen (who played seven games with Calgary last year) in the minors and opted to bring Morrow up instead.

Joining Morrow on the trip from Providence to Boston is diminutive David Warsofsky, another primarily offensive defenceman who scored reasonably well in college and the minors and has enough positive assets (speed, smarts) to compensate somewhat for his 5’8” stature.

Warsofsky was the final defenceman cut by the Bruins out of training camp, and there was some speculation that he might get claimed on waivers given that he’s seen as ready for NHL action or very close to it. He held his own in a cameo in 2013-14, and he might even be the best bet to play well on the second pair. 

None of these players are terrible in isolation, but as a group, they’re ugly. The slew of injuries has robbed the Bruins of their depth, and Bartkowski’s struggles couldn’t have come at a worse time. Boston’s going to be leaning hard on Adam McQuaid and a call-up to take on some tough second-pairing minutes, and that’s a hard position to fill, particularly because the third pairing is going to be very, very green.

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Normally, the Bruins would have some points in the bank from early in the season, but the club is just 5-6-0 to start the year. Normally, they’d also have one of the best goalies in the game to bail out the defence, but Tuukka Rask is having problems of his own at the moment and is hovering around the 0.900 save percentage mark. Both of those factors make the defensive situation more worrying than it would be in isolation.

The defence isn’t close to good enough as is, but the good news is that none of these injuries are likely to be season-killers; a month from now, the Boston defence could be healthy. The question is how much of a hit the team will take in the meantime; the club isn’t currently in a playoff position and needs Rask to rebound more than one might expect. It’s pretty unlikely that this wave of injuries costs the Bruins a postseason berth, but with Tampa Bay’s improvements and Montreal’s start to the season (to say nothing of the Red Wings or Senators), it could well cost them home ice in the first round of the playoffs.

Jonathan Willis covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter for more of his work. Statistics via behindthenet.ca and NHL.com.