It was noted on the popular hockey chat site, HFBoards.com, that Bruins defenseman Matt Bartkowski is on TSN.ca’s list of restricted free agents who have filed for salary arbitration. The rules are basically that the player and team can negotiate right up in time of the scheduled hearing (which would fall between July 20 and Aug. 6), so most cases are avoided at the doorway to the hearing. It avoids all the nasty insults that hurt feelings and erode bargaining power on both sides going forward.

The other side of that coin is that Bartkowski had a strong “rookie” season, and with new contracts for Torey Krug and Reilly Smith in the works, the Bruins cannot afford to keep Bartkowski from a salary-cap standpoint, award or negotiation. But there is a bigger reason he won’t be back.

The player acquired from the Florida Panthers as a prospect added to the Dennis Seidenberg deal at the 2010 trade deadline put up 0-18-18 totals with a plus-22 in the 2013-14 regular season while averaging 19:32 in regular-season ice time, the lion’s share of those shifts coming in the second half of the season skating in Seidenberg’s spot on the left side of the second pairing across from Johnny Boychuk. Seidenberg will be back, and there is no room on the roster with the defense necessarily four deep with right-handed shots (more on that below).

The decision to play Bartkowski rather than deadline pickup Andrej Meszaros (who played 4 of 12 postseason games) was indicative of coach Claude Julien’s faith in the kid’s in-season progress, but it also implied that Meszaros didn’t have what it takes to band-aid a top-four spot on a run at the Stanley Cup. The accompanying youth on Boston’s blue line for the 2014 playoffs — Seidenberg, Andrew Ference (free agency) and Adam McQuaid (injury) were all replaced by young players lacking NHL mileage typical of a Cup contender — proved too great to overcome. Also, Torey Krug was still a rookie, making it four kids with two veterans, captain Zdeno Chara and Boychuk. No team has ever won the Cup with as young and inexperienced a defense as the one the Bruins just tried to win it with. Their only chance was if the Meszaros acquisition had worked out. It did not, particularly in that role where Bartkowski’s coverage mistakes proved costly.

So did the other young defensemen’s mistakes — and Boston’s lack of timely offense in the seven-game ouster to their hated arch rival has been a popular offseason subject — but the point here is the 2014-15 season, in which Bruins management is projecting a lineup including healthy returns for Seidenberg and McQuaid.

The McQuaid part is this is relevant beyond that hard carom that skittered off Kevan Miller’s skate and into Lars Eller’s reach for a strength-sapping goal in the early moments of Game 6 at the Bell Centre. Even if the Bruins prefer Miller — McQuaid was only occasionally deployed in higher pairings than the third, whereas Miller’s game has warranted more exploration as to his upside — McQuaid cannot be replaced and moved in a trade until he can reestablish value, and that only happens with a healthy return proven in at least a month’s worth of solid hockey without setbacks.

The guy who doesn’t get talked about except by Chiarelli who said he has nine NHL defensemen, is David Warsofsky.

It’s obviously a giant leap from the AHL to the NHL, but watching Warsofsky in Providence during the Calder Cup I was left with the belief that the Bruins’ chances of surviving the Montreal series would have been better with him on that second pairing instead of Bart. Poor Bart was in over his head in ways that Warsofsky would not have been, and those areas made the difference in the series. Without a veteran there (the Seidenberg injury had to come the same year that Andrew Ference was no longer in the lineup), the Stanley Cup was out of the question, especially with youth on the top (Hamilton) and bottom pairings (Miller-Krug). Too much all at once, inflating the price of Bartkowski’s mishaps.

A pothole of a series against Montreal notwithstanding, 2013-14 was a very good year for Matt Bartkowski, whose next logical move is to seek the best contract he can get and hasten a move to an NHL team where he can continue growing his game. Warsofsky is the other surplus defenseman whom Chiarelli referred to in answer to my questions on his July 1 conference call.

With Ference gone and Seidenberg injured, the Bruins went from having two left shots who could play right side in 2013 to none in 2014. They have no right shots who play left side, and it’s been suggested that with Boychuk’s contract up after the 2014-15 season it would be prudent to trade him, moving Seidenberg into that spot and keep Bartkowski on the left where the Bruins can reap the benefits of this past season’s experience.

That is not the preferred scenario for a number of reasons we’ve addressed in recent blogs.

Chiarelli’s projected solution is that Hamilton has shown the skill and dexterity to grow his game and eventually become that guy. The Bruins are no longer cautious when musing on the upside of Dougie Hamilton. His was the more successful story of 2013-14, a second-year player who didn’t even get a full rookie season due to the lockout and whose playoffs abruptly ended on that overtime goal that cost the Bruins an opportunity to sweep the Rangers. Hamilton bounced back into action and hit the ground running, finishing the season as a convincing choice for Chara’s long-term defense partner.

So here’s how the water flows for 2014-15: Seidenberg returns to second pairing left side opposite Boychuk and can switch to right when needed; Hamilton will dabble in that role from the opposite side as needed and they’ll see how it goes (all the while remaining on the top pairing with Chara — and presumably, I expect, transitioning over the next few seasons into a more equal role with Chara and his game matures … you see where this is going as they’ve been encouraged by Hamilton’s progress); and finally, the third pairing where McQuaid must play in order to reestablish value, even if Miller is the preferred player in the long term. Krug is terrific in his role but not suited for a consistent, top-four role. The Bruins actually asked him to be less physical this past season, to play more like Warsofsky rather than spending so much energy in wrestling matches with bigger forwards. At season’s end, Julien reported progress in this area.

33-27

44-55

47-54/86

Are there other possibilities for the Bruins’ blue line in 2014-15. Of course, but this is the way it funnels at present, and there are no factors compelling me to expect another scenario.