Five Musts for the Bruins to make the playoffs

While there are a great number of unanswered questions about this - Bruins association there is one thing of which we can be pretty certain The Bruins will not be lifting the Stanley Cup come June Call it what you want a rebuild or a retool Whatever They ve hit that inevitable down cycle where it s time to restock for another day in terms of contending for championships But that does not mean the B s should now just accept that they are exiled to the NHL wilderness So what is a reasonable goal The playoffs Half of the teams make it and if the B s do that this year then you can fairly call this season a success Now there s a sizable district of Bruins fans who would like to see their association completely tank the season in hopes of the best draft pick Maybe they ll get back to a top pick on their own but it would be a mistake to outright tank from the start of the season If it s not going well at the agreement deadline then sure they can reassess But you never want to let the losing settle into the bones of the franchise e g Buffalo Sabres They have to continue to strive It will be more intricate for the B s to make it than particular other middling teams because of the tough Atlantic Division But if everything goes right it can be done Here are the Five Musts for the Bruins to make the playoffs this season Jeremy Swayman and Joonas Korpisalo challenge for the Jennings Trophy Airtight goaltending is an imperative for this goal-challenged offense There were selected promising returns in preseason Though both goalies had hiccups in their first starts they both responded with stellar starts in their final exhibitions combining for saves in the two wins The company in front of them has to do a better job of shot suppression but they both appear to be on their battle More is expected out of Swayman whose troubles last year were well-documented He missed camp amid a rough contract negotiation his play suffered upon his return and he never was consistently the member that nabbed an eight-year million contract He can and should be much better But he s not going to carry the whole load not in this condensed schedule because of the Olympic break Right out of the gate the B s start with a back-to-back and play four games in six days Korpisalo will be needed to provide not just competent backup work but the kind of B assistance that Jaroslav Halak gave Tuukka Rask No matter who s in net this is not a gang that can withstand any soft goals The blue line enjoys good vitality Even before the debilitating season-ending injuries hit last year first to Hampus Lindholm and then to Charlie McAvoy the B s defense was off Interim coach Joe Sacco righted the ship for a short while but then it all fell apart again after Christmas Marco Sturm has tweaked the system using a kind of hybrid zone man-on-man and the aim is to clog up the neutral zone Hopefully that will slow down the opposition from entering the B s zone with speed which happened far too often last year While problems existed before the injuries there should be no underselling those losses Lindholm was playing well at the time of his injury in November and has looked very good in the preseason so far while paired with Andrew Peeke McAvoy s pairing with Mason Lohrei has been much more of a work in progress but so far Sturm seems intent on allowing that duo to grow and develop The one holdover pairing from last season Nikita Zadorov and Henri Jokiharju should provide a few steady work especially if Zadorov can keep his adventurous tendencies to a minimum and pick his spots judiciously He s got various offensive gifts that he proved in preseason Special teams return to elite status The power play finished th in the league last year while the penalty kill was th in the -team league That merely cannot happen again if this crew expects to challenge for a playoff spot Winning or losing the man-up man-down situations will often be the difference between winning and losing games Sturm has seemed more concerned with the latter than the former With one of the greater part explosive offensive players in the league in David Pastrnak and a Morgan Geekie who discovered his stride last year they should be able to total at a better clip It will be assistant coach Steve Spott s responsibility to find a way Meanwhile Sturm has put out the call to players who are willing and more importantly able to kill penalties The B s lost their all-time shorthanded goalscorer Brad Marchand as well as fellow PK stalwarts Brandon Carlo and Charlie Coyle Elias Lindholm and Casey Mittelstadt have to play like top-six centermen Lindholm should be OK here He s flanked by a bona fide superstar in Pastrnak and a athlete in Geekie who has shown he s a capable scorer In the preseason Geekie looked poised to repeat his -goal season If Lindolm provides the defensive conscience for his two wings the top line should be good He began last season his first with the Bruins with a back injury In retrospect you could tell that he was hampered by it He was reticent to engage in puck battles and that is not his championship Lindholm should be better this year especially with two familiar linemates He may not be a line-driving first line center but his role fits him in this spot The big question is Mittelstadt Sturm spent much of training camp trying to decide whether he should be the center on the second line or whether it should be Pavel Zacha He eventually landed on Mittelstadt but the time it took to come to that decision does not instill a lot of confidence Mittelstadt clearly has offensive skill as evidenced by his slick pass to Zacha on his goal in Saturday s preseason finale Ideally he can get Viktor Arvidsson back to the -goal plateau But the defensive zone is where he necessities major improvement Mittelstadt was minus- in games with the B s last year That s not going to cut it A kid has to pop The leading and at the moment only candidate is Fraser Minten Sturm spoke for much of the Bruin fandom last week when he announced I like this kid Indeed the -year-old rookie made the company and it wasn t much of a surprise He cinched a spot halfway through camp Obtained from Toronto in the Brandon Carlo arrangement the th overall pick in has shown himself to be a smart and instinctive participant often anticipating where the puck is going He s got good size - pounds to go along with the good head on his shoulders As of right now he ll be anchoring the third line and the feeling here is that he can learn on the job without hurting the organization Minten s ceiling is still unknown But when he was thrown on the ice with Pastrnak and Geekie he did not look out of place taking a pass from Geekie and sending a sweet backhand feed to Nikita Zadorov for a goal With a first-round pick top- protected in June coming as well this contract looks like the biggest winner of all the deals that they made last March