Bleacher Reports’ Joe Yerdon listed five different teams for Edmonton Oilers forward Leon Draisaitl to land in 2024, and the Boston Bruins were one of them.
No, the Bruins don’t have an ideal cap situation, or they won’t once they re-sign Jeremy Swayman and potentially Jake DeBrusk, but it shouldn’t deter general manager Don Sweeney from doing all he can to make a move to acquire Draisaitl.
Even without the NHL’s best goaltending tandem in Swayman and Linus Ullmark, the Bruins are still one of the league’s best defensive-oriented teams.
Swayman now has a good partner in Joonas Korpisalo, and players like Hampus Lindholm, Charlie McAvoy, and Brandon Carlo, among others, make the Bruins overall defensive units one of the best in the NHL.
But forward is another story, with David Pastrnak, Brad Marchand, Charlie Coyle, and Pavel Zacha being the only four legitimate threats when the team has the puck, at least as far as last year’s numbers show us.
Boston hasn’t gone incredibly far in the playoffs in the previous two seasons, and one reason why is their forward group.
Making a deep playoff run means getting around the newly-crowned Stanley Cup Champions, the Florida Panthers, and it’s not happening unless they acquire a star forward like Draisaitl.
This is a player who finished with 106 points last season while scoring 41 goals, and the tandem he would make with Pastrnak alone would put the Bruins on another level.
