BUFFALO — With the scouting combine in his rearview mirror and the draft just two weeks away in Florida, the busy season is upon Bruins general manager Don Sweeney.

Not only will there be young men to draft, but the trading season kicks into high gear once the Stanley Cup finals end. Sweeney has made it no secret that he’s open to just about anything to get his team on track, whether it’s through a player-for-player swap — aka “a hockey trade” — or dumping some salary so he can dip his toe in the free agent waters, even though the UFA pool is pretty shallow.

He also has to figure out a way to pay defenseman Dougie Hamilton, who appears to be getting more expensive by the day. That means Carl Soderberg most likely won’t be back, which was reported by Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman on Saturday and was becoming more and more obvious, especially after the B’s signed 27-year-old Finnish forward Joonas Kemppainen at the cut-rate salary of $700,000.

The B’s may still want to sign rugged defenseman Adam McQuaid, a UFA, but they may need to offload some salary to do so.

There are a handful of veterans who could be in play. Milan Lucic will be heading into the last year of a deal with a $6 million cap hit. Loui Eriksson is going into the last year of a $4.25 million hit. Chris Kelly has one year left at $3 million. And Dennis Seidenberg has three years left at $4 million. After a disappointing season, Reilly Smith just signed a two-year extension worth $3.425 annually.

Without mentioning any names, Sweeney is keeping all options open.

“Any time you can improve your hockey club, you have to explore everything,” he said. “I’ve had an opportunity to talk to a number of general managers and they’re thinking the exact same way. I think there are teams that are looking at hockey trade opportunities more than they have in the past, but it’s still hard to do. Things have to line up. I’d love to be in a situation to have more flexibility to explore whatever the hell it takes to improve the club.”

With all that said, Sweeney does not want to overreact. When a team is affected by injuries, those making the decisions can’t use that as an excuse or they’ll never make it through the tough stretch.

When the dust settles and the GM assesses everything, he cannot ignore the facts.

It’s not a stretch to think the B’s would have been a much better team if only David Krejci had been healthy. Throw in injuries throughout the season to Zdeno Chara, Kevan Miller, McQuaid, Brett Connolly and Torey Krug and that made for an unusually unlucky season.

“It’s clearly a factor. And we were still knocking on the door with 96 points, it’s never been done before, to miss the playoffs with that many points. That cannot go by the wayside. You simply cannot cast that aside in this situation,” Sweeney said.

“And that’s part of the process (of the decision to bring back) our coaches, knowing they’ve had success. We’ve analyzed the situation and we’re going to continue to do that as we look at the roster to see how we do it better. I just want to make sure we’re living in the present and moving forward with what we need to do. That’s a big part of it for me.”

And if you want to know the type of player he wants to be drafting, just keep watching the Chicago Blackhawks and Tampa Bay Lightning in the Stanley Cup finals.

“There’s definitely heightened awareness with the two teams that are in the finals and there’s definitely a speed and skill component,” Sweeney said. “But it was still 1-0 in the third period (of Game 1). You realize teams are willing to lock it down and they’re willing to do it at this time of year. You have to have that balance.

“But, hey, you’ve got to be able to score goals. You can’t just turn it on, flip a switch and hope it happens. You have to be able to create those opportunities and both these two teams have that ability. But they also know how to check. Structure and accountability is not leaving our organization from a philosophical standpoint, but I think we need to be able to create the anxiety, and that comes in all shapes and sizes. You can compare (Brad Marchand) and Looch, two opposite ends of the spectrum, size-wise, but they can both create anxiety in their own way. Now, we didn’t finish like we have in the past. And that has to be unearthed.”