What We Learned: For better or worse, Bruins are who we thought they were

The big fear around the Boston Bruins this summer was what they would do to patch the holes in their roster created by the semi-retirements of David Krejčí and Tuukka Rask.

There was reason to believe that bringing in Linus Ullmark would keep the goaltending solid if unspectacular, but the by-committee approach cobbled together for the forward group looked like it was going to put a lot of pressure on the top line to produce.

And, in perhaps the most competitive division in hockey, with the very real threat of the Patrice Bergeron era ending in a season or two, that was an iffy proposition. They tend to lose pretty ugly games to good teams (their recent game against the Edmonton Oilers) and womp on bad ones (Sunday night against the Montreal Canadiens). 

But in the grand scheme of things, there isn't a lot of margin for error with this club now and if you were putting together a nightmare scenario with all the money they spent this summer, this is roughly what it was going to look like.

That top line has a combined 18 goals, and the rest of the team has just 22. Erik Haula has a goal and an assist in 13 games (though he has perfectly fine underlying numbers and he’s performing well at the dot, having taken the second-most draws on the team and won 55 percent of them). Tomáš Nosek has just one goal. Nick Foligno has only gotten into five games and hasn’t scored. Derek Forbort has been a bit of a drag on everyone he’s played with.