The 27-year-old took over the captaincy from Aaron Redmond last season and is responsible for leading a team in transition.
The retirement of the province's leading scorer, Craig Cumming, has left the most obvious gap in the dressing room.
While no-one else has followed Cumming into retirement, veteran seamer Warren McSkimming's future is uncertain. He was not contracted this season and work commitments mean he will not be available for Otago until after Christmas.
The injury-prone James McMillan (34) is in the twilight of his career and Ian Butler turns 31 next month.
When you consider left-arm striker bowler Neil Wagner will probably miss part of the summer while on national duty, de Boorder is going to have to manage his stock of seamers carefully.
Thankfully, there is a good group of emerging players. Jacob Duffy made a promising debut last season and left-armer Blair Soper is another likely to get plenty of opportunities. Potentially, the pair could play quite a lot of cricket and others such as Marcus Frost and Sam Blakely may also get chances.
A large stable of quality seamers is a non-negotiable for every first-class team and de Boorder is confident Duffy and Soper have what it takes.
"It is exciting to have some young guys come into the set-up," de Boorder said.
"Both those guys are local players and it's good to get them in the mix. They've shown a lot of potential over the winter.
"Duffy did well last season when he got opportunities and I think it is a matter of him building on those performances.
"Blair has done some great work over the winter and with the experience we've got with guys like Ian Butler, Neil Wagner and James McMillan in the mix, it is great for those young guys to feed off that experience.
"It could be our strength. Those guys are going to want to make a point. They might lack in experience but they make up for it in enthusiasm and bring a fresh spark into the team.
"Also, the opposition won't know what they do either, so you will have that element of surprise. That can work in your favour sometimes."
While Otago's bowling resources are likely to be stretched, it was the batsmen who let the side down last summer.
Reliable contributors such as Redmond and Neil Broom were well below their best. Redmond's form was so poor he was dropped in all three formats and Broom was lucky to survive the cull. He played all 10 first-class games, reaching 50 just twice.
De Boorder and others such as Sam Wells got some good starts but were not able to push on and help get Otago into winning positions.
Even the best players endure periods where their form dips but de Boorder said the camp had not always prepared as well as it could - an issue which was addressed during the season.
Too many players were drifting through training sessions and showing up underdone and without a blueprint for success.
"We need to make sure we are professional about how we prepare for games," de Boorder said.
"We need to have plans in place so, when we get into those pressure situations, we have something to fall back on. And we have to stay level whether we win or lose and continue preparing well.
"We learned a lot and started to turn things around towards the end of the season. After the ND game, we had tough game against Auckland but turned that around against Canterbury and produced one of our better performances against Wellington in the last game."
Hamish Rutherford's rich vein of form certainly helped. He replaced Redmond and made an instant impact at first-class level, scoring back-to-back centuries against Northern Districts and a double ton against Wellington.
"You have times when you go through ups and downs and I think this year the guys have put in the work and we've backed the players we had last year to do the job."
Otago opens its campaign against Canterbury in Rangiora tomorrow.
