With the departure of Torey Krug to St. Louis and the uncertainty surrounding the future of Zdeno Chara, the Bruins have some holes to fix on their blueline, more so the left side of their defensive core.

With Matt Grzelcyk, John Moore, Jakob Zboril and Urho Vaakanainen as the remaining left-shot defensemen in the mix for playing time in the coming season, the Bruins lack a true shutdown left-shot defenseman.

Although the plans for the 2020-21 season are finally unfolding, not much has changed on the Chara front.

“Well we still have to flush that out. You know I think Zee (Chara) was waiting to see what the schedule looked like, how it may impact his decision, so we’re still flushing that out,” said team president Cam Neely.

“We do want to take a look at some of these young left shot D’s that we have in our system to see if they can step up or is it the time for them to step up and see where they're at in their development. We certainly respect Zdeno and everything he's done for the organization and what he's accomplished as a player and what he's done both on and off the ice here in Boston, so you know it's really just a matter of what his desire is and how the coaching staff and we feel what our lineup should look like or could look like depending on the development of some of these young guys.”

Even if Chara and the Bruins are to come to terms on a new contract, is the 43-year old Chara going to be able to give you 20+ minutes a night in a season where it’s expected you’ll be playing more back-to-back sets inside a condensed schedule.

With the National Hockey League and its Players Association coming to an agreement on a 56-game season that begins on Jan. 13, the free agent market and trading frenzy is expected to pick back up again.

Like many teams across the league, the Bruins are low on cap space. With a tick under $3M left in cap space, adding to the roster as is—whether it be Chara or someone else—won’t be easy for the Bruins to accomplish.

“Well I think now that everybody's kind of seen what the schedule is and when the start is things may pick up a little bit,” said Neely. “You know I still think we’d like to still explore our back end a little bit. Even though we feel we've got some guys that can step in, it's just a matter of the experience piece that everybody likes, but you don't get experience until you play.”

As teams scramble in the coming weeks to get things in order to begin their season, there will be options available for the Bruins to better their roster entering the season.

With the lack of cap space, the Bruins will have to get creative in any efforts to improve their roster.

“If something makes sense for us, we have always had the right to spend up to the cap. It's just you know we do like to have a little wiggle room especially as you’re tracking towards the trade deadline you’d like to have as much space as possible depending on what may be available for you,” said Neely.

“This year is going to be a little different too with the taxi squad, you know those players will not be on your cap until you need to put them in your lineup so you know you just have to be really careful with your cap number going into this season probably more so than other seasons.”

The Bruins may have some wiggle room to start the season depending on the statuses of Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak as both recover from offseason surgeries. If they’re unable to start the season, freeing up cap space by using LTIR spots remains an option.

“As far as hard dates it's hard to put a hard date on those guys. Brad I know has been on the ice a couple times which is a good sign. David recently got back into town and will continue his rehab. I'm sure you know we can get you some dates as things progress here, but right now I don't really have any hard dates for you,” said Neely. “Brad is maybe ahead, I don't want to say ahead of schedule, but ahead of where Pastrnak is.”

As players return to Boston from different states and countries and continue to go through different COVID protocols, Neely revealed some players have been skating on their own at Warrior Ice Arena and that as of Monday, no Bruins have yet opted out of the coming season.

Neely also confirmed the report that they were looking into playing some home games outdoors this season, but that now sounds unlikely to happen.

“We looked at that it and really you know unless you can get a certain number of fans in a building it didn't really seem to make sense financially,” said Neely. “You know it's a big undertaking getting the system outdoors to play on, so we looked at it hard, but it looked like it was the best course for us to stick to playing at the TD Garden for now.”

As teams like the Florida Panthers and Dallas Stars have announced they plan on having limited fans in attendance when the season begins, Massachusetts remains under strict protocols and will not have fans in attendance to begin the season.

But the Bruins and TD Garden do have several plans in play and will be ready as soon as government officials allow them to open doors to fans in any capacity.

“Well we're certainly hoping for a full house at some point this year. I mean when that is, I don't know, is it going to be in in May, June, July, you know it's hard to say. Are we going to get fans in the building at some point in January? I'm not sure. February? It's out of our control,” said Neely.

“But we have made plans for no fans, a third of fans, half fans, three quarters and then a full house.”

Once fans are allowed back into the building, what will the fan experience look like? Certainly, much different than it was in March.

"It's really entering the building, how to enter the building six feet apart, how to go up escalators six feet apart, where do the fans sit depending on if it's a family, restrooms are certainly outfitted for protection, same with ordering concessions, it's not standing up there waiting in line, it's ordering online and then you're told where to go pick it up,” said Neely.

“So, it's really everything you can think of to help protect the fans once they're in the building.”

The NHL is expected to release it’s game schedule later this week.

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