The Boston Bruins have already made one big change this season, firing Jim Montgomery and replacing him with Joe Sacco on an interim basis. And the front office isn’t done, with the next move to come on the ice — at least according to The Fourth Period’s Dennis Bernstein.
“They’re looking for offence… they’ve been looking left and right,” Bernstein said on a recent episode of TFP’s The Latest on Monday. “So look, they’ve never replaced the offence from losing Jake Debrusk (via free agency). They haven’t gotten what they needed offensively from Elias Lindholm – but I’ll be honest with you, on a championship team he’s a 2C, he’s not a 1C.
“I think they need to find offence, but Brad Marchand has to be more healthy and better, Charlie Coyle has to be way better, Pavel Zacha has to be better – it’s been a group effort on why they’ve been so poor offensively.”
The Bruins have fallen back to .500 at 10-10-3 after a disappointing 2-0 loss to the Vancouver Canucks on Tuesday night at TD Garden. It was Sacco’s first loss as head coach after Boston defeated the Utah Hockey Club and Detroit Red Wings in his first two tilts as bench boss.
General manager Don Sweeney and the front office are in a tight spot; the team currently has under $1 million in cap space to work with, per PuckPedia.
“It’s going to be difficult. They don’t have a ton of cap space to play with. That’s the other thing that’s part of it,” added The Fourth Period’s David Pagnotta. “So, whether it’s a Coyle, a Zacha, a (Morgan) Geekie… we know Trent Frederic has generated some interest this season. They’ve got to find ways to swap out the dollars in order to bring in some offensive help. We’ll see if that can pull that off.”