In the offseason, the Bruins jettisoned their talkers.

WILMINGTON — Hockey dressing rooms are a funny place, and not just because of the often obscene humor that takes place inside them.

It is the space where players put on their gear before warmups, where they remove their jerseys during intermission. Mostly, there is a lot of sitting and waiting — the 15 minutes or so between warmups and taking the ice, the 17-minute intermissions. The game prep has been done well before warmups, and intermission adjustments are announced quickly by the coaches.

It leaves a lot of time to kill. For juiced-up, testosterone-filled professional athletes on a game night, it should be a charged-up atmosphere.

Often for the Bruins, it's been deafening silence.

“Multiple times,” Torey Krug said last week, “you look around and you’re like, ‘What’s going on? It’s so quiet in here.’ ”

In the offseason, the Bruins jettisoned their talkers. Shawn Thornton's post-hockey life will be funded by his ability to yap. Johnny Boychuk was a well-liked, positive force who kept the room light-hearted. In his lone season here, Jarome Iginla brought his own flavor of leadership after a decade as Calgary’s captain.

They are scattered across the league now, and their replacements have included 21-year-olds Seth Griffith and Joe Morrow. There are currently nine players under 25 years old on the roster. Expecting young players to speak up is as likely as a hockey bag that doesn’t reek.

As much as there’s been an adjustment on the ice for the Bruins this season, there’s been a personality adjustment off it as well.

“It isn’t as vocal as it has been in the past. That’s just reality,” Chris Kelly said. “Young guys come in and you don’t want to be the loud guy. Not too many guys come in and are too outspoken early on.”

General manager Peter Chiarelli does not make moves with the decibel level of the dressing room in mind. Thornton was sent on his way for hockey reasons, Iginla and Boychuk for financial ones. On the matter of vocal leadership, Chiarelli expects that to be sorted out internally.

It's a tricky task, though. Some players are comfortable right away with motivating their teammates through words. Kelly, an alternate captain, was talking within months of being traded to the Bruins in 2011. Patrice Bergeron has always been a lead-by-example player, although he is louder now than when he started wearing a letter in 2006.

Many need time to find their voice, though. It requires respect, tenure and confidence to tell your teammates when something needs to be fixed. Griffith, Morrow, Reilly Smith, Matt Fraser and Zach Trotman are quiet by nature.

There is more onus on veterans who could take a back seat to utilize their public speaking skills, long-time cogs like Milan Lucic, Dennis Seidenberg and Gregory Campbell. Lucic spoke to Thornton about it over the offseason, but his quiet start has muted him. The same goes for Brad Marchand. It hasn't helped that fellow letter-bearers Zdeno Chara and David Krejci have missed much of the season with injury.

“You can’t force it if it’s not authentic,” Krug, a captain at Michigan State, said. “People see right through it. It’s just about guys naturally coming out of their shells and getting the ability to speak up. But if it’s not authentic, guys see right through it and tune it out.”

There is no sure way to measure how a team’s chatter in the dressing room impacts its play on the ice. There are indications, though. The Bruins have scored first in just 10 of their 25 games; among current playoff teams, only Toronto and Montreal have been worse at gaining a 1-0 lead.

The Bruins have been plagued by sluggish starts recently. There was no urgency or energy to their Nov. 21 game in Columbus for 40 minutes before rallying to a shootout win. A week later against Winnipeg, coach Claude Julien admitted “everything we talked about this morning didn’t happen in that first period.”

There may not be a connection between the level of talking in the room and the starts to games. Then again, maybe there is.

“When you’re at the rink and guys start talking, it’s a lot more fun. When it’s more quiet, the mood’s different,” Krug said. “You get out on the ice, and I don’t know, maybe guys aren’t as excited as they should be. It’s definitely a different vibe and you can tell the feel in the room is different. We’re naturally working our way through that, and the guys that are working their way in will get into it.”

This was expected. The Bruins continued a youth movement this season. The results have been seen on the ice and in the room. It’s no easier to replace players like Boychuk and Thornton as players than as wordsmiths.

“When you lose those guys, it’s definitely missing,” Seidenberg said. “But that’s when other guys have to step up and grow into their roles. That takes time. That’s what we’re going through right now.”