The Boston Bruins have a lot of big questions waiting to be answered over the next 10 months or so.
First and foremost, the Bruins will have to make tough calls on the futures of Casey Mittelstadt and Pavel Zacha.
How the team itself performs over the course of the regular season will chart out the paths forward for those players, as if the team underperforms, it'll be hard to pass up on the hauls they could get for both players.
Behind those calls are the decisions that'll get made for the pending RFAs next summer, Fraser Minten, Mason Lohrei, and Marat Khusnutdinov.
Lohrei remains a trade candidate, but as the season draws nearer, it feels much likelier the Bruins will give him an opportunity to take a leap forward in his development and showcase his potential as a puck-moving top-four defenseman.
Minten, meanwhile, will look to springboard into a full-time role in Boston's top six, at which a bridge deal likely makes the most sense, before a highly costly extension in the expanding cap world.
Khusnutdinov represents the most compelling candidate for a long-term extension for the Bruins.
Eight-year contracts go extinct in September, so if the Bruins wanted a full eight-year deal, the cost would come in close to what the Penguins just gave Ville Koivunen on an eight-year deal.
However, Khusnutdinov broke out this year, posting 15 goals and 33 points in 78 games, with signs of chemistry and a potentially larger breakout looming for the skilled forward.
If Boston wanted to bet on his upside, en eight-year deal would have to come in above Koivunen's number.
With an exploding cap, could the Bruins bet eight years with an annual cap hit of $4.5 million?
Khusnutdinov's camp could look for as much as $5.5 million AAV, but that steep of an increase based on one season remains unlikely.
Once the clock hits September, eight-year deals dissipate, and the Bruins end up with a max term of seven years.
