The Boston Bruins are in unfamiliar territory and a response is imminent.

With 46 games played, the Bruins hang onto the second Wild Card spot by one point. They’ve won their last two games but dropped six straight before that to land themselves in a position of great uncertainty with the trade deadline less than two months away.

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Heading into the start of the 2024-25 season, CEO Charlie Jacobs was told by his management team that the Bruins have a championship-contending roster.

Having made the playoffs for the last eight consecutive seasons and winning the Presidents’ Trophy only two years ago — a year in which the Bruins established the greatest regular season record of all time — the window for hoisting a Stanley Cup for the first time since 2011 is closing itself as time wanes.

With half the season behind them, the Bruins have no wiggle room for errors to convince management in keeping this core intact.

“If history is any indication of what we can anticipate, if you look at Don Sweeney’s stewardship and Cam Neely’s stewardship since 2015 since Don took over, we’ve made the playoffs eight of the 10 years,” Jacobs told The Athletic. “I’m not going to measure success in making the Stanley Cup playoffs. Let’s be very clear about that. Our goal is to win the Stanley Cup. But you can’t win the Stanley Cup if you don’t make it to the playoffs. Our team has done that for the past eight years. I hope we do it again this year for our ninth.”

This means that even captain Brad Marchand, whose eight-year contract expires at the end of this season, is on the table to be dealt.

The 36-year-old continues to be one of the Bruins’ top scorers year after year as he’s No. 2 on the roster with 35 points, but is it worth holding onto the face of the franchise as he pushes into his late thirties when the Bruins could start a rebuild by trading him while he still carries value?

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That question is going to be answered by how the Bruins respond throughout the rest of January into February.

“I was talking to some former players, some of the greatest of all time,” Marchand said earlier this week. “To be in that presence and see some of the guys that have come and gone, they’re not just some of the best in our organization, but some of the best to ever play the game. Some of the best leaders to be part of the game.”

Other players that could make sense to deal in terms of shedding off term would be Charlie Coyle, Pavel Zacha, and Brandon Carlo.

In return, general manager Don Sweeney could look to acquire players that either have decent term left on their contracts or ones that can help stockpile a thin Boston prospect pool.

“I feel like he’s got a pretty good pulse on what’s out there in the market in terms of player personnel that might be available to us,” Jacobs said. “Every time I call him — we speak quite a bit — he’s always looking and always shopping. So I have faith.”

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