Bruins-Lightning Projected Lines, Pairings: New Faces To Debut

The Boston Bruins enter a new era after a franchise-altering NHL trade deadline.

General manager Don Sweeney traded multiple core pieces Friday, including Brandon Carlo, Charlie Coyle and of course, Brad Marchand. The trades were made with an eye toward the future, but the B’s are expected to have some of their new pieces debut Saturday against the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Casey Mittelstadt, Marat Khusnutdinov and Henri Jokiharju are the new faces expected to debut. Multiple players are either in Tampa Bay or were on their way to Florida, and it will be up to interim head coach Joe Sacco to decide which combinations work best. Jakub Lauko is not expected to start.

The Lightning also were active before the trade deadline and expect forwards Yanni Gourde and Oliver Bjorkstrand to debut.

Puck drop at Amalie Arena is scheduled at 3 p.m. ET on ABC.

Here are the projected lines and defensive pairings for Boston and Tampa Bay.

BOSTON BRUINS (28-28-8)
Morgan Geekie — Pavel Zacha — David Pastrnak
Casey Mittelstadt — Elias Lindholm — Riley Tufte
Cole Koepke — Matthew Poitras — Vinni Lettieri
John Beecher — Marat Khusnutdinov — Mark Kastelic

Nikita Zadorov — Ian Mitchell
Mason Lohrei — Andrew Peeke
Parker Wotherspoon — Henri Jokiharju

Jeremy Swayman

TAMPA BAY LIGHTNING (37-21-4)
Jake Guentzel — Brayden Point — Nikita Kucherov
Brandon Hagel — Anthony Cirelli — Nick Paul
Gage Goncalves — Yanni Gourde — Oliver Bjorkstrand
Zemgus Girgensons — Luke Glendening — Mitchell Chaffee

Victor Hedman — J.J. Moser
Ryan McDonagh — Erik Cernak
Emil Lilleberg — Darren Raddysh

Andrei Vasilevskiy