With the Bruins set to take the ice for training camp in less than two weeks, questions remain about whether or not Zdeno Chara will be there on Jan. 3 donning the Spoked-B for a 15th season. Neely indicated that discussions with Boston's long-time captain are ongoing.
"Well, we still have to flush that out," said Neely. "I think Zee was waiting to see what the schedule looked like, how it may impact his decision, so we're still flushing that out."
Neely added that the team is looking forward to seeing what it has in some of the young, left-shot defensemen - among them Jeremy Lauzon, Urho Vaakanainen, and Jakub Zboril - coming up through the system. With Torey Krug departing for St. Louis via free agency and Chara's status still to be determined, opportunity is there on Boston's back end.
"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?" said Neely, who noted that the team continues to look at potential options - whether it be by trade or free agency - to shore up the back end.
"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…it's really just a matter of what his desire is and how the coaching staff and we feel our lineup should look like, or could look like depending on the development of some of these young guys.
"Is that something that he would be comfortable with, how we maybe envision it looking compared to maybe how he feels it may look? This is a really difficult time for anybody that is going to come off a long break and have a short training camp and jump right into a compressed schedule with a number of back to backs and, I think, 116 days to play 56 games, so there's a lot of factors in play about what makes sense for us and what makes sense for Zdeno."
