UPDATE 4:40 PM CST: Jimmy Murphy of VICE Sports adds that in their search for defencemen, the Bruins have offered their first round pick (29th overall) to the Florida Panthers for Dmitry Kulikov as a “starting point”.
4:35 PM CST: In a tweet that assuredly caused panic in St. Louis, Darren Dreger reports that “The Shattenkirk watch is on” and that Boston among other teams are heavily interested in the blueliner. Jeremy Rutherford of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch adds a quote from Blues’ GM Doug Armstrong: “I don’t think either of us are naive. I’d love to find a way to keep Shatty here and we’re going to work toward seeing if there’s common ground. But you just can’t keep everybody.”
Kevin Shattenkirk is owed $4.25MM in the final season of his current deal, and is set to become an unrestricted free agent next summer. He’s basically a lock for 40 points from the back end, as he’s eclipsed that mark in the last four full seasons (and was on pace to do so in the lock-out shortened 2012-13).
If Boston was to acquire Shattenkirk, he’d immediately become the second highest paid defenceman on the team behind Zdeno Chara, and would seemingly join Chara on the top pairing. With the Bruins being rumored as trying to trade away Dennis Seidenberg and his $4MM cap-hit before a potential buyout, they would be creating room for Shattenkirk under their current payroll.