Bruins' Forward Lineup Options Have Been Exhausted

Courtesy of NHL.com

Saturday's miserable loss to the New York Rangers prompted a whirlwind of questions about this Bruins team's scoring capabilities, particularly in the bottom-nine forwards. How can this lineup produce only 18 shots on goal through three periods? It's a problem that has been rearing its ugly head for many seasons now.

Management's solution to this issue has consistently been to shuffle around the bottom-six forwards and expect one of them to spark the offense. At today's morning skate prior to their matchup with the Pittsburgh Penguins, Bruce Cassidy has taken out Jack Studnicka, shifted Bjork to the third line, and put Karson Kuhlman in on the fourth. For a team that just had its worst offensive showing of the season, this adjustment is uninspiring at best.

The unfortunate truth is that Bruce simply has no one else to work with. We've seen him try nearly every combination of depth forwards under the sun, from Kuhlman to Wagner to Anton Blidh. If you're still looking for a combination to get that bottom-six going, then it means the current group of players you have aren't going to cut it - you need to look elsewhere.

If a silver lining can be found in this, it's that these offensive issues are becoming visible before the trade deadline; historically, they don't appear until the playoffs, lulling management into feeling content enough with the lineup that they don't make a move when they can. The onus is now on Don Sweeney and the Powers-That-Be to acknowledge these issues and take action through a trade.

This is not to say that the Bruins should be targeting, say, Jack Eichel and such. The center position is not an area of need, and even if the returns for a player of his kind didn't gut the lineup entirely, it would be foolish to expect one player to do all the offensive lifting. (That's exactly what we're trying to move away from.) So, the trick will be to find a bottom-nine forward that can actually score decently. It's a lot easier said than done, but considering it's been the focus of management for several years now, I should hope that they've grown wiser from their trails and errors.

I'm always against trades that are nothing but a reaction to a mid-season slump. But it's clear now that the Bruins are following down the same path towards a mid-playoffs exit that we've seen so many times - that this is a long-term problem that has doomed them in the past. Shuffling the lineup may create short-term success now, but it cannot be Sweeney and management's solution to the team's underlying problems on offense.