BRIGHTON, MA – On the first day that the Boston Bruins could ink David Pastrnak to a long-term extension to keep him in Boston and officially begin negotiations, the Bruins did not even exchange any numbers with Pastrnak’s agent, JP Barry.

“Nothing concrete. We didn’t exchange any numbers. Officially we can now,” said Boston Bruins GM Don Sweeney of negotiations that are expected to net Pastrnak something in the neighborhood of the richest deal the organization has ever handed out to a player. “So, we’ll go right to work in seeing where David’s at and we’ll take an aggressive mindset and hopefully find the common ground and see. There’s no timeline on it. Today was the very first day, in all honesty, that you could actually put a number in front of the player.

With a lot going on elsewhere, it’s just not an area we’ve touched on. Maybe I’ll call tonight and let you know after that whether or not I’ve actually exchanged numbers if you’re that concerned about it. But we’re going to attack it in an aggressive mindset and see where it hopefully plays out. That’s really the timeline to be more definitive.”

That was kind of par for the course for the entire NHL free agent frenzy proceedings from a Boston Bruins perspective.

Instead, the Boston Bruins made one hockey trade exchanging Erik Haula to the New Jersey Devils for unsigned RFA Pavel Zacha that admittedly was a good deal by Boston Bruins general manager Don Sweeney. And they signed five minor league hockey players to contracts in AJ Greer, Keith Kinkaid, Connor Carrick, Dan Renouf and Vinni Lettieri in NHL transactions that didn’t exactly move the needle enough to create a pump-up video for social media.

It should be noted, though, that the 25-year-old Greer, a Boston University alum that played with Charlie McAvoy and Matt Grzelcyk, is on a one-way deal that would denote he’s going to be in the mix for bottom-6 forward duties this season after finishing with 22 goals, 52 points and over 100 penalty minutes in the AHL along with nine games played for the New Jersey Devils.

“In A.J.’s case, had a heck of a year offensively. I think he understands, in talking with him today, and doing our background work on him, he understands himself a lot better as to what type of player he is and how to be successful,” said Sweeney. “And hopefully that translates [to the NHL]. I mean, from the skating and a speed standpoint, getting on pucks and being an aggressive mindset with his size, it’s an attractive quality for us to add to our group.

“[New Boston Bruins head coach Jim Montgomery] was excited about going through the coaching process and how he envisioned the bottom part of our lineup looking like. I think it was an area that we tried to identify and A.J. was a guy that we feel had some upside there.”

Still, none of the truly important orders of business for the Boston Bruins were resolved on a free agency frenzy day when NHL teams begin to finish their offseason checklists. Along with seemingly very little progress being made with the 26-year-old Pastrnak on keeping him in Boston for the long haul, the Boston Bruins also didn’t finalize the contracts for Patrice Bergeron or David Krejci despite all signs pointing toward their return.

The Bergeron and Krejci deals honestly don’t seem like they’d be all that difficult to execute given the way it works with fairly standard one-year, incentive-laden deals that are common with NHL veterans over 35 years old.

“We’ll probably be a little more tilted looking at the performance [bonus] side of things,” said Sweeney, referencing the Bergeron and Krejci contract structures. “In Patrice’s case there’s certainly not a deadline. He’s dictating his timeline, but the conversations have gone well, so I’m not overly concerned about it. David’s recently indicated in terms of where he’d like to be, so I don’t think there’s a level of urgency.

“Obviously, the sooner you get these things, if you can, to a closure, the better off you’ll be. Ideally yes, I would like an earlier timeline on everything.”

The ideal early timeline for the Boston Bruins would have been getting everything wrapped up in a bow by Wednesday afternoon.

Instead, the Bruins traded their only signed top-6 center from last season in Haula and now have top-6 center candidates in Bergeron, Krejci and Zacha where none of them are in the fold with signed contracts. It can’t feel good for a general manager to have so many things unresolved on a day when NHL teams are looking to trumpet big moves, orchestrate big, splashy press conferences announcing new acquisitions and generally the direction that their team is moving toward for the following season.

Instead, the Boston Bruins have very clearly opted for the choice to take one last run with their aging centers like Bergeron and Krejci surrounded by the existing roster talent, but the problem is they don’t even have any guarantees either player is absolutely coming back to Boston right now.

Compare that with a Tampa Bay Lightning organization that decisively traded Ryan McDonagh last week due to salary cap issues, and on Wednesday announced they’d signed restricted free agents Anthony Cirelli, Mikhail Sergachev and Erik Cernak to eight-year contract extensions to keep the core together in Tampa.

Once again it appears the Lightning are using some LTIR sleight-of-hand with Brent Seabrook’s dead contract and that there may be more shoes to drop due to salary cap constraints, but Tampa Bay is also making moves to show they are not messing around. The same goes in places like Montreal, Ottawa and Detroit where it looks like several of the Atlantic Division bottom dwellers are poised to make huge moves this season, and the Boston Bruins are largely holding onto the past glory of the last 10 plus years.

“Tampa did several deals today that indicate that there are market shifts, and you just have to move along with it if you’re going to be competitive in this league. Good players are going to put their demands forward, and you’re going to have to decide as an organization whether you can fit those things in or how you’re going to fit those things in,” said Sweeney. “Especially if you want those players, that’s just the nature of how the dynamic of the cap and how teams are being built. I think you’re seeing it pretty much across the board, that these players are existing and what their contract wishes are. As an organization, we have to continue to react to that in a market environment. Again, implementing younger players that provide depth to the organization is paramount.

“Overall, the league is going to remain competitive to get into the playoffs. There’s no question. These cycles that are existing, it’s getting harder and harder to just maintain your footing. You look at Tampa reinvesting in their own players since they believe in them, and we’ve [also] done that over here pretty well for a period of time. I think referencing that, you have to continue to find pieces that help you as well as what you’re going to develop. I would say honestly some teams hit the accelerator in some areas [to move forward].”

Sweeney closed out his press conference comments by indicating that the Boston Bruins aren’t going to be aggressive in the free agent market moving forward, and that signing Bergeron and Krejci could be where their “free agent frenzy” ends. For a day that started with a lot of possibilities in terms of generating some excitement for the 2022-23 campaign, the Boston Bruins came nowhere close to sticking the landing on Wednesday afternoon with more loose ends than reasons for optimism for next hockey season.

Sweeney has said several times that his Boston Bruins team “left something on the table” in their first round playoff loss to the Carolina Hurricanes, and the overriding feeling is that there’s still a lot on the table from a B’s perspective one day into NHL free agency.