A painful off-season was always going to be on the horizon for the Bruins.
Be it a looming cap crunch, a barren cupboard of prospects following a series of win-now moves, or both Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci’s unsustainable defiance of Father Time, the bill was going to come due for Boston this summer.
Ideally, those concerns were going to be assuaged by the sight of Bergeron hoisting the Stanley Cup in June.
Instead, Boston’s shocking first-round exit against Florida accelerated the timeline of Boston’s massive exodus of talent.
And while the departures of key cogs like Taylor Hall and Tyler Bertuzzi will sap away some of Boston’s scoring depth, the retirement of both Bergeron and Krejci will usher in a sea change not felt within the Original Six franchise in over two decades.