Bruins will benefit from structure when NHL returns, Cassidy says

There's no question that the Boston Bruins have a veteran club, the core of which began its run in 2011 with a Stanley Cup Final win against the Vancouver Canucks. But there is a question as to whether in the current situation -- with the NHL on pause due to concerns surrounding the coronavirus -- that is a positive or a negative.

To coach Bruce Cassidy, there might be some good news in all the years that his team has under its belt.

"I think that nobody knows until you get back out there," he said on Monday. "We do have some older guys. It might take their engine a little longer, but I think they are true professionals and know how to keep in shape maybe better than some of the younger guys that just feel like, oh, when we're ready to go, I can ramp it up.

"I do believe some of the veteran guys know that they need to stay with it because it's not a switch you can turn on and off. So that, I believe, works to our advantage."

The Bruins are led by 43-year-old captain Zdeno Chara, and their best and most important players include Patrice Bergeron (34), David Krejci (33), Tuukka Rask (33), and Brad Marchand (31). They entered the pause with 100 points, the most in the NHL, in a bid to win the Stanley Cup that eluded them last season, when they lost to the St. Louis Blues in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final.

"Now, getting your legs under you quicker, yeah, probably a younger guy, less aches and pains the next day," Cassidy said. "So I think it's the recovery of the older guys that we've got to monitor as much as anything. Less so the conditioning, more the recovery."

Marchand had expressed recently some trepidation about the age of the Bruins, about whether their roster -- with one of the oldest average ages in the NHL this season -- would hamper them.

"I honestly think that the teams that are going to come back and look good are the really young teams, teams like Toronto or Tampa. Really high-end skill teams," Marchand. "They're going to have the legs. They're going to be able to get it back quick. But older teams are really going to struggle."

Perhaps, though, the way that the Bruins play might help them, even if their age doesn't.

"I think our team plays a pretty structured game," Cassidy said. "We're not a loosey-goosey team that just relies on making plays all night to win, so I think that helps us in that regard. Structure can be your friend until you get your legs under you, or your security blanket until you find your offense in games. That's the good part about our team. I just think it's an unknown at the end of the day, what team will come out of that simply because no one's ever been through this."

It's just one of the many unknowns.

And it's hard to game-plan for that, not knowing what the landscape will look like once the NHL returns.

So they're considering every angle, thinking through every scenario. Are there seven days of workouts or training camp before the season could relaunch? Seventeen?

"That factors into it, how fast we would ramp up," Cassidy said. "Then I think it's a personal decision or personal conversation with each player. Obviously Bergy, Zee, they may need a little more time or different intensity as maybe a [Jake] DeBrusk or [David Pastrnak] that's younger. So those are all the things that will go into it."

All the factors that will go into the Bruins reclaiming the magic that happened last season, and that was building this season, with the team going 16-4-0 in their final 20 games before the pause.

"My expectation is like everyone else's, we've got to be ready in a hurry," Cassidy said. "We've got to be ready quicker than the next team and that's very hard to predict because no one's ever been through this. I know our players are excited about this opportunity that I'm assuming is coming.

"They'll be highly motivated to get themselves ready to play and that's where you hope that during this break the guys have taken that to heart and done as [much] as they can right now, so they don't have to play too much catch-up."

Ultimately, as Cassidy said, whatever happens, the Bruins' goals are the same as they have always been.

"Obviously our standard is to be Stanley Cup champions and that hasn't changed and that won't change," he said. "I would think every team would think the same way."