Going into the 2024-25 season, the Boston Bruins have plenty of questions they need answered. Some are just general questions, but some are more urgent than others.
In the offseason, the Bruins let winger Jake DeBrusk and others walk in free agency and sign with other teams, a good majority of them with the Vancouver Canucks. Boston in turn took two core pieces from the Canucks by signing center Elias Lindholm and defenseman Nikita Zadorov.
Related: 3 Bruins Prospects Who Could Make Their NHL Debuts This Season
Before the free agency period began, however, one of the biggest trades of the NHL offseason came when Boston traded Linus Ullmark to the Ottawa Senators. While there are many questions that need to be answered, here are the three biggest ones that should be answered throughout training camp and the preseason.
Question #1 – Who Will Be the Second-Line Center?
Going into the season, Lindholm is the bona fide number-one center the Bruins have been searching for since Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci retired. He is likely to be surrounded in his forward group by the likes of Brad Marchand at left wing (provided he is healthy) and David Pastrnak at right wing.
The big question then becomes, who is the second-line center? While line numbers didn’t seem to matter to head coach Jim Montgomery, and his tendency was to err on the side of the hot line to start the next game, it may be different going into 2024-25 with a bona fide number-one line.
The second-line center contenders are most likely Charlie Coyle, Pavel Zacha, Morgan Geekie, and (if he makes the NHL roster) Matthew Poitras. Given his durability and ability to score goals, the job will most likely go to Coyle. Coyle, a grizzled veteran of 14 NHL seasons, has played all 82 regular season games in each of his last three seasons. He also did so three other times which came during his tenure with the Minnesota Wild.
In Coyle’s previous two seasons before the 2023-24 campaign, he scored 16 goals while adding 28 and 29 assists on top of that, respectively. Coyle, however, turned it up a notch in the 2023-24 season, scoring a career-high 25 goals and notching his second-highest assist total with 35. To add to his resume, Coyle also had the third-best faceoff percentage on the team with a 51.6 winning percentage.
Question #2 – Will Zacha Be Best Suited as a Center or Winger?
In his…
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