Bruins’ playoff run exposed huge roster flaw that must be fixed ASAP

“The lack of our ability to score in the playoffs, in general — you can’t win every game 2-1,” Boston head coach Jim Montgomery said after the Game 6 loss to the Panthers. “We had the opportunities. We had five odd-man rushes after two periods (in Game 6). In Game 4, we had several breakaways. Their goalie was good, and we didn’t beat him.”

The upcoming offseason is a pivotal one for the Bruins. There are many takeaways from the Bruins’ loss to the Panthers, but one huge flaw in Boston’s roster that this series — and the playoffs as a whole — exposed is a lack of elite offensive talent.

How many elite offensive players do the Bruins have? David Pastrnak. That’s the end of the list. When your best player is a right wing, and you don’t have a traditional top-six center, that’s typically not a recipe for being a Cup contender — even if that player is as talented as Pastrnak.

The benefit of having multiple game-breakers at forward is the opponent can’t focus the majority of its attention and double down defensively on one single player. Anything can happen in one game, but over the course of a seven-game series, it’s tough to win with one elite forward. Maybe you can get away with it for a single round, especially if your goalie plays out of his mind — like Swayman did in Round 1 — but over four rounds that’s not a winning strategy.

Brad Marchand is still a top-tier two-way left wing, but he’s 36 years old. Pavel Zacha and Charlie Coyle are very good players. Neither one is the second- or third-best forward on a championship-caliber team. Zacha has one goal in 25 career playoff games. He was largely ineffective at center during the playoffs and played a lot of left wing versus the Panthers as a result. Coyle scored one goal in 13 games during the 2024 playoffs, and he has just five goals in his last 27 postseason matchups.

Jake DeBrusk led the B’s in playoff scoring with 11 points in 13 games, but he’s way too inconsistent to be relied on. Morgan Geekie is a…