It’s discussed every season, in virtually every professional sport, and there’s no right answer.

Should teams who have locked up top playoff spots — and more interestingly, home ice in the postseason — sit key players, or at the very least, limit their ice time, during the last few games of the regular season in the hopes this will rejuvenate them for a long playoff push?

The question comes up more often in football than the other four major North American sports — and has historically and curiously centered around the Denver Broncos’ Peyton Manning, which I’ll get to in a second — but this season, it has become a hotly discussed issue among hockey pundits now that the Boston Bruins have locked up home ice throughout the Eastern Conference playoffs with their 5-2 victory over the Philadelphia Flyers on Saturday.

The Bs had been chased by the Pittsburgh Penguins, who have since clinched the Metropolitan Division, for the East’s top spot.

Although there has already been evidence that Boston is opting to rest its players as the regular season winds down, that doesn’t mean the debate over sitting players is over.

Should the brain trust that is General Manager Peter Chiarelli, President Cam Neely and head coach Claude Julien decide to rest its older players in favor of giving its more highly touted prospects real NHL experience?

Let’s look at the pros and cons.

Pros

– It allows them to rest veteran cogs and minute eaters likeZdeno Chara, fellow defenseman Johnny Boychuck, wingers Jarome Iginla and Chris Kelly and goaltender Tuukka Rask — guys they’ll need to be at their best if they want to raise the Stanley Cup this spring.

– Key future prospects like Ryan Spooner,Alexander Khokhlachev, Joe Morrow and goaltender Niklas Svedberg get valuable ice time to prepare them for when they will be needed to contribute in the near future.

– It gives Julien and Chiarelli the opportunity to experiment with the offensive depth chart, giving guys who’ve cooled off recently like Reilly Smith a chance to hit the reset button while simultaneously getting a better read on who should play with who when the postseason begins.

– Injury prevention. The less they play, the less likely they are to go down and be out for the postseason.

Cons

– Resting players and pairing others with unfamiliar teammates could compromise the rhythm, unity and momentum this squad has generated in the last month.

– Assuming they clinch the East, there is still the possibility of relinquishing their hold on the President’s Trophy to one of the Western Conference contenders — namely St. Louis, the Anaheim Ducks and San Jose Sharks — which in turn means they wouldn’t have home ice in the Stanley Cup Finals.

Although anyone who can count can see that I’ve listed four pros and only two cons, let’s look at Manning’s history to see what we’re left with:

Manning and the two organizations he’s played for in his professional career under center have had mixed results when trying to sit the one-time Super Bowl champion in the latter stages of the regular season.

In 2006, with the top seed in the AFC secured and virtually no reason to risk injuring their franchise cornerstone, Manning played every game for the Indianapolis Colts. He would go on to raise the Lombardi Trophy in addition to being named MVP.

The Colts opted to rest Manning in their final regular season games the next two seasons, both of which ended with first round playoff exits at the hands of the San Diego Chargers.

Indianapolis had a shot at a perfect season when they ran out to a 14-0 record in 2009, but elected to rest Manning in the final two contests. They lost both games but did reach the Super Bowl that year before falling to the New Orleans Saints.

Manning would play the full 16 games in 2010 before being ousted by the New York Jets in the first round of the playoffs once again, and would relive that fate two years later, this time with the Denver Broncos, with a home loss against the Baltimore Ravens in his first postseason with his new club.

Okay, so it’s obviously difficult to conclude what’s best with such mixed results in such a small sample size, and it’s even harder to quantify what kind of effect playing younger prospects down the stretch has on their effectiveness when they become regulars later on. So what about home ice in the Stanley Cup Finals?

The Bruins have punched a ticket to vie for Lord Stanley’s most famous hardware twice in the last three seasons, and the outcomes of both years seem to debunk the value of having home ice at all.

Boston beat the Vancouver Canucks on the road in Game 7 in 2011 to win the Cup, and the Chicago Blackhawks, despite winning the President’s Trophy and securing home ice last season, used two road wins — one of which being the series-clinching Game 6 — to top Boston and bring home hockey’s most coveted prize.

So, what are we left with? In a word: inconclusiveness.

The pros outweigh the cons when it comes to resting players, tipping the scale slightly in support of giving guys some sort of a respite in these final two weeks. But Manning’s tale is a cautionary one, regardless of the sport he plays or the incomparable emphasis that is put on quarterbacks in the NFL.

This dilemma is why Chiarelli, Neely and Julien make the big bucks, and the decisions they’ve made are why their franchise has been one of the top organizations in the NHL for many years.

Despite how murky a situation like this can become, a few things remain certain: the debate will rage on for years to come; only an organization truly knows what is best for its athletes and coaches in these situations; and there will be playoff hockey in Boston this spring.