Bruins left wing Jake DeBrusk is a good trade chip for a Boston team that has gone 19-8-2 since Jan. 1 and is worthy of a sizable deadline investment. Elise Amendola/Associated Press

As the Bruins turn into the stretch drive toward the March 21 trade deadline, they face several very pressing questions, including this, the biggest one. Is it more of a gamble to trade Jake DeBrusk, or to hold on to him for the rest of the year? The feeling here is it’s the latter.

This much we know is true. This team has proven worthy of a sizable deadline investment.

Since Jan. 1 when Coach Bruce Cassidy remodeled his forward lines, the Bruins are 19-8-2. They’ve beaten the best in the league in Colorado as well as the two-time defending Stanley Cup champions in Tampa Bay. It is reasonable to think that, with better balanced lines, this is who the Bruins are and not the mediocre, meandering version of themselves we saw before the New Year.

Just how big of an investment GM Don Sweeney and team president Cam Neely are willing to make lies in how much they’ll borrow from their fast approaching, Patrice Bergeron-less future. Maybe that unpalatable future will be next season, maybe it’s two years from now. But it is coming.

So what are they willing to give up? Contrary to popular belief, their prospect pool is thin but it is not completely empty. Last year’s No. 1 pick Fabian Lysell, now ripping up the Western Hockey League with the Vancouver Giants, is a glittering offensive prospect, even if scouts have differing opinions on how far away he is from the NHL. Ohio State defenseman Mason Lohrei could be one more Buckeye season away from regular big league duty.

But to this observer, the line is drawn at those two players. After that, the Bruins prospects – including centermen Johnny Beecher and Jack Studnicka – should be made available, though the Bruins would have to get a high-impact player back in return for any package deal that would include either of those two. While Beecher and Studnicka may be future NHLers, neither is trending toward top-six pivot work and will not begin to address the departure of Bergeron, whenever it comes.

Also, this year’s first-round pick, a commodity that Sweeney has been reluctant to give up in the past, should be in play as well.

But the biggest piece to deal is, of course, DeBrusk.

On the positive side, the 25-year-old DeBrusk is helping both himself and the team with his improved play and presumably upping his trade value.

On the downside, it would be a kick in the pants for Bruins’ management if this new and improved DeBrusk we are seeing is the player he will be for years to come.

If that’s the case, the Bruins will have done the hard work with him, lived through the peaks and valleys, shown the tough love when necessary to create a fully formed, top-six NHL forward, only to have some other team reap the rewards of that player’s prime years. Ouch.

And while some may chalk up DeBrusk’s surge as simply a product of playing on a line with Bergeron and Brad Marchand, the sense here is that the notoriously inconsistent player has made more progress than that. Before he was placed in the penthouse with Bergeron and Marchand, he was assigned third-line duty with Charlie Coyle and current Providence winger Oskar Steen and that line was the team’s best unit for several games. He then held his own in a checking role on a fourth line with Tomas Nosek and Curtis Lazar. His game has been coming on for a while.

So is hanging on to DeBrusk through the March 21 deadline really an option? It is, especially if management is putting a disproportionate amount of eggs in this year’s basket given the uncertainty around Bergeron. But it still may not be a good option.

Projecting DeBrusk’s state of mind and heart if he’s still here after the deadline – not an easy exercise – will have to be factored into the thinking. One would hope he’d remain a professional – even a little mercenary – and looks at the rest of the season as a running meter that could drive the price of his next contract up instead of down from his $4.4 million qualifying offer, as many have projected. That approach would help both sides.

But it’s not that simple. DeBrusk has demonstrated that his off-ice happiness, or lack thereof, can greatly affect his on-ice contributions. The Bruins might not even be in this situation if the isolation of the pandemic restrictions didn’t throw his game and development so far off course last season. That’s not a knock on the kid, just a fact of life.

So unless the team and the player can repair whatever damage has been done in the relationship – something that hasn’t happened in the three months since his trade request became public, his agent has made clear – it would be best to move on. Sweeney did well not to simply dump him for the proverbial “bag of pucks,” but the time is nigh for the team and player to part ways.

If they do finally pull the trigger, their main target must be a first-line right wing, if it wasn’t that already. And this team both needs and deserves it to be a damn good one.