It was a somber day in Boston on Tuesday after the news that one of the all-time great Bruins was hanging up the skates for good. Patrice Bergeron was the heart and soul of the Boston Bruins for 19 years, leading by example on and off the ice and helping bring a championship to Massachusetts in 2011.

The team is going to look a ton different next year, after a slew of players left in the summer of 2023. Cam Neely and Don Sweeney cannot be blamed for giving the 2022-23 Bruins every possible tool to win another Stanley Cup, bringing in multiple impact players at the deadline. Boston's campaign was one of the best in regular season history; when the Stanley Cup Playoffs started, the team boasted an outrageous 65-win, 135-point showing to run away with the President's Trophy and become unanimous Stanley Cup favorites.

But the dream was shattered on a Carter Verhaeghe goal in Game 7 of the first-round against the Florida Panthers, stunning the crowd at TD Garden and leaving the squad with nothing but answers since. It's hard to argue that the 2023-24 Bruins will be favored to win anything next season, but their biggest roster concern heading into next year is undoubtably centre depth.

Bruins will look a lot different next season

The Bruins were an absolute wagon heading into the playoffs in 2023, but they somehow blew a 3-1 lead to the Panthers, who ended up getting within three wins of their first ever Stanley Cup. It was a mass exodus in Boston after that. Taylor Hall and Nick Foligno were traded to the Chicago Blackhawks, mainly for salary cap reasons. Tyler Bertuzzi, Dmitry Orlov and Garnet Hathaway, three players who were brought in at the NHL Trade Deadline to make the team the fearsome unit they were, all walked in free agency. And now, after losing a ton of important pieces, the team's best defensive forward and one of the greatest at his position of all time will not be around after Bergeron hung them up on Tuesday. It's expected that David Krejci will do the same.

Bergeron retires, Krejci likely to follow

Patrice Bergeron will go down as one of the best defensive centreman in the history of the National Hockey League. Losing him is an absolute gut punch for a Bruins team that is already reeling from so many key departures.

“For the last 20 years I have been able to live my dream every day. I have had the honor of playing in front of the best fans in the world wearing the Bruins uniform and representing my country at the highest levels of international play,” Bergeron wrote as part of his statement. “I have given the game everything that I have physically and emotionally, and the game has given me back more than I could have ever imagined. It is with a full heart and a lot of gratitude that today I am announcing my retirement as a professional hockey player.”

It's hard to imagine that David Krejci will not be retiring in the coming days or weeks; he's just a year younger than Bergeron and took a lot of convincing to come back to the NHL after heading home to play in the Czech Republic. Neely has already said the team is approaching the offseason under the assumption that both Bergeron and Krejci will not be returning. That leaves a glaring hole at the centre position for the Bruins, who don't have a legitimate 1C heading into next year.

Biggest Bruins concern: Centre depth

The Bruins are extremely thin at centre next season, there's no way around it. Pavel Zacha was excellent for the team last year, and will almost certainly play on the first line with David Pastrnak and Brad Marchand. That will still be one of the best lines in hockey. It's after that where things get dicey.

As it stands, the team's 2C, 3C and 4C are as followed: Charlie Coyle, Morgan Geekie and Patrick Brown. It's borderline catastrophic. And the winger depth also took a huge hit with Bertuzzi and Hall leaving. The defensive core remains basically the same, with Charlie McAvoy, Matt Grzelcyk, Brandon Carlo and Hampus Lindholm leading the charge. It's still an excellent top-four. The goaltending is great with Linus Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman, one of the best tandems in the game.

But losing Patrice Bergeron really summed up what was a miserable offseason in Beantown. The 2023-24 squad will look completely different, and a shadow of the 2022-23 Boston Bruins who will likely go down as the greatest regular season team in NHL history.