Quoting: BestGMBenning
Zboril I will agree has been a nice addition and Urho has as well. It’s just the way they’ve aged. DeBrusk has fallen off a cliff. Senyshyn really hasn’t been good. Their best pick ups were players in the 2nd round and one of them is no longer on the team and another isn’t in the NHL anymore. But I guess their defence depth is fine. But the forward depth is just not that great. Most of them in the past years have been at best 3rd-4th line players. Like Oskar Steen and Anton Blidh. They may have found their way onto the roster but they aren’t high impact prospects. They already have a good defence group that we’re grown through Boston’s system but they don’t have any prospects that have grown in to top 6 players. They can’t keep relying on free agency to bring the top 6 players in. And the only great assets they have to offer up in trades are draft picks. Like it or not the prospect pool still isn’t super strong.
i agree with gofnut though if cassidy wasn't our coach some of those guys might have turned out differently. bruins have had a good team for a long time so obviously young players will have a harder time cracking the line-up but once chara, krug were gone and even some of our wingers we had, backes, heinen, spooner, donato, nash, vatrano, mojo all gone between 2016-2020 theirwas multiple times cassidy could have gave a young guy a chance maybe let them develop with krech or bergy and marchy like they did with pasta but it seems as if cassidy has a hatred towards young guys he really likes vets and it kills our prospects confidence.
Bruins AHL coaches the last 2 seasons have made it known senyshyn went from being a pure goal scorer to a solid two way player. They have even said that senyshyn has been one of the top players on the team these last two seasons. i want to point out that the year seny was drafted he had 26g 45p in 66 games the following season he had 45g 65p in 66 games he continues that 40 goal pace at a higher ppg rate the season after right then in there he should have been given 1st line AHL oppourtunites and or some nhl action but instead he was given 4th line grinder minutes in the ahl just because he wasn't the strongest defensively.
one thing bruins struggles with was depth scoring and in 1 year we acquire 2 wings one LW one RW that showed flashes of elite scoring ability along with insane speed, senyshyn was considered one of the fastest players in his draft year, hey guess what krech needed fast hard working goal scoring wingers, cassidy really effed up on seny's development same with the AHL coaches. i truely believe if debrusk and seny both got called up at the same time they were have formed a very dominant scoring line. Seny had blazing speed with an elite shot, he had okay hands but that is something he can work on the fact was he was strong and hard to get off the puck and had a very accurate shot, seny thrived off creating odd man rushes and getting breakaways now you stick one of the leagues best playmaking pure passers with that type of player it couldn't be any more obvious the type of success that could have been translated with that line.
it truely hurts to see how bad cassidy screwed those young guys developments, zboril was in for a hard run as having stars like krug and chara solid vets at the time in john moore, nick holden
young offensive up and comer who was in the system for a while already in matt grezlyck, and also having to fight for a spot with 2 other u21's in big physical dman jeremy lauzon which was much needed and one of the most solid all around d prospects from the 2017 draft in urho vaakanienen it's gonna be pretty hard to crack the squad when there's 7+ guys all competing for 3 LHD spots. chara and krug had solidified spots so it was literally 5 guys competing for 1 spot.
might i also add a lot of bruins D prospects like krug, grzz, lindgren with NYR none of them cracked full time spots till they were 23-24 now they are all very solid top 4 and better dmen, well guess what zboril is 24 and urho is literally 26 days freshly turned 23 to think there careers are over is far fetched they still have time to develop into the top 4 dmen they were supposed to be especially with the massive jump both them took this season they are looking very promising now
sorry for the rant just kinda needed to prove my point that a lot of these young guys are seriously improving this year and the bruins future may not be as bad as people think
having a core bit of studnicka, lysell, lohrei, vaak, zboril, harrison,steen, swayman who all can become top6, top4, all star goalie caliber players is fine with me i think we don't need to target the biggest names out there just try an acquire players that fit the roster well and improve the holes needed to be fixed and we can make a good run along with saving futures.
i think we will have like 2 years of retooling around 2024-25 and 2025-26 and then once all the young guys are ready we will be a good team again