Having had a morning to further digest the trade of Johnny Boychuk to the N.Y. Islanders, here is what I see as the theory behind a decision that I suspect came not from GM Peter Chiarelli specifically but from a meeting of the management minds involving higher levels of influence including Team President Cam Neely (avoiding the word authority here — not suggesting that Chiarelli was trumped, but that this was an intense debate and that there was not 100% agreement on which way to go among the voices in the room — it could not have been that easy either way).

The Bruins are banking on the experience that their young defense (especially Matt Bartkowski) got in the 2014 playoffs paying off this season, with Dennis Seidenberg and Adam McQuaid returns offsetting the loss of Boychuk. Ergo: They think they are at least as good and potentially better with the in-house maturation of Bartkowski, Dougie Hamilton, Torey Krug and Kevan Miller. Plus, they have some nice draft picks and an opportunity to use them to improve in season if they decide to. This accomplishes a lot of things, and as soon as the team takes advantage of its new course — remember, they surged in calendar year 2014 to their first Presidents Trophy in a quarter century without Seidenberg’s assistance.

The one caveat to all of this: For now, either Bartkowski (first choice for the Bruins, I expect) or Miller will skate in the top four, the two players whose gaffs killed them in the playoffs. If you figure that a mid-20s Miller will eventually be a reliable third-pairing guy and that Bartkowski is not going to grow hockey sense in one year, then the Bruins are essentially as vulnerable in the next playoffs as they were in the last playoffs.

That’s the part that fails to square up for a win-now team. Dealing Boychuk is not a win-now move, and you’d think through their experiences of failures, successes and more failures that the Bruins would have understood by now that you always need a little more than you thought, not a little less.

The loss of Boychuk will impact the Bruins in another critical dimension beyond his easy-going personality, which was a nice change of pace in a dressing room overloaded with intense characters. Minus Nathan Horton and Tyler Seguin, this team proved incapable of smashing through the ceiling of gridlock hockey with individual plays, and Boychuk is the kind of player who had that carpe diem in his game. Those dynamics now have to come from younger players. Hamilton and Krug have it in them, but it’s a lot to ask at that career stage. Up front, it’s a committee, and an improved Brad Marchand will certainly help.

So maybe this trade works out better for the Bruins in the long run, but a Cup contender cannot improve its title chances trading away a top-four defenseman (with suspect replacements) for a winger on any line unless it’s, say, Neely himself at age 24.

Do the Bruins now have a better chance of winning the Stanley Cup four or five years from now? Absolutely. Do they have as good a chance of winning the Cup in 2015? Given Chiarelli’s trading style, absolutely not.