In a rundown of hockey news today, Matt Porter of the Boston Globe addressed, amongst other things, the Boston Bruins impending salary cap crunch, and speculated on what the organization could do to improve its situation (link). In sum, Porter says that even with Brad Marchand slated to miss time after surgery on both of his hips, presumably landing him on LTIR to start the season, and with Patrice Bergeron either not returning or perhaps taking a steep discount, Boston could still find itself up against the salary cap next season, not even considering any moves the team needs to make to improve.
As of right now, the Bruins are projected to have just $2.84MM in salary cap space next season, which does not factor in making any moves, or creating any additional space, like putting Marchand on LTIR. Though not over the cap, if Boston wants to improve or even return the same quality team to the ice, they will need to spend to do so, but would have to get creative with how they shed salary. One suggestion Porter makes is to buy out the contract of forward Nick Foligno, who has one-year at $3.8MM left on his contract. Doing so would reduce the cap hit to just $1.933MM next season and $930K after. Foligno has been a reliable point producer and excellent leader his entire career, however his production fell off sharply this season with Boston, tallying a mere two goals and 11 assists in 64 games.
Still a tremendous veteran presence for any team, his $3.8MM cap hit is tough to justify on a team as close to the ceiling as Boston. If the organization wants to eliminate his entire cap hit, they will likely find a market for which to trade him, however the veteran will have a 16-team no-trade list and dealing him would likely require the Bruins to send draft pick or prospect compensation with him. It might seem unlikely that Foligno would accept a trade from a perennial contender to, expectedly, a rebuilding team, however a team in the market to absorb Foligno’s salary would likely be able to give him the ice-time and role he might prefer, as well as a chance to be dealt to a competitive team at the trade deadline anyways.
Another suggestion from Porter would be to make a practical trade of a regular, albeit replaceable player, such as forward Craig Smith or defensemen Matt Grzelcyk or Mike Reilly. Smith, who has one more year at $3.1MM, has been a solid contributor for Boston since coming over from the Nashville Predators in free agency prior to the 2020-21 season, putting up a solid 16 goals and 20 assists in 74 games this season. With his solid play and reasonable cap hit, Boston should be able to find a partner in a Smith trade and even receive an asset in return. The Bruins could then replace Smith in-house with young options like Fabian Lysell, Oskar Steen, or Jack Studnicka, as Porter suggests.
As good as Reilly and Grzelcyk have been for the Bruins, Porter adds that they are very similar players, thus making one potentially expendable in the right situation. Both players have two more years remaining on their contracts, Reilly at a cap hit of $3MM and Grzelcyk at just under $3.69MM. In addition to having very similar styles of play, the two have also had remarkably similar production, both tallying 44 points over their previous two seasons, Grzelcyk doing so in 110 games, Reilly in 125. On the left side, the team does also have Derek Forbort under contract at $3MM for the next season, though he is not as remarkably similar to Grzelcyk and Reilly as those two are to one another. Trading any of the three would also not pose a hazard to Boston’s depth, as they also have the recently-acquired-and-extended Hampus Lindholm and 25-year-old Jakub Zboril, who is still awaiting his first job as an NHL-regular.
Finally, a seemingly obvious solution for Boston would be to trade forward Jake DeBrusk, who owns a $4MM cap hit through 2023-24, and notably asked for a trade earlier this season (link). After requesting the trade, DeBrusk continued to play hard, and well, for Boston, ultimately finishing the season with 25 goals and 17 assists in 77 games. For his career, DeBrusk has continually produced similar numbers outside of a poor, outlier 2020-21 season and at age-26 for most of next season, his contract represents solid value for whatever team has him. Trading DeBrusk might seem like a given, but if the winger possibly changed his mind or is willing to play out the remainder of his contract, keeping him may be a prudent decision for Boston considering his value. Though DeBrusk has the highest cap hit of any player discussed, ultimately when trying to build a competitive team under the salary cap, the salary cap hit is less important than the overall value the team is receiving on the deal.
Seems weird to say about a guy who was a few hours away from almost winning a Cup, but Sweeney has done a HORRIBLE job there. Not just bad…horrible.
You’re not wrong… he was handed a great core and has done absolutely nothing to build around those players. Mostly poor drafting, mostly poor signings, and mostly poor trades. Sure, he’s had a good outlier here and there, but a large majority of his moves have had a negative effect on the franchise. I don’t understand why a lot of the Bruins writers are letting Sweeney off the hook. Keeping him around is going to set the team back for a while in my opinion.
the drafting more than anything is what’s killed them.
Those 3 straight picks passing on Barzal, Connor and Chabot…wow. Franchise altering miss.
Ullmark was a dagger in the heart. $5mil AAV for a backup goalie.
That McAvoy contract is just too much as well. $1,500,000 per year too much, I would say. Not a huge amount but these over-pay contracts add up.
Far too many D-men getting $9,000,000 + contracts in this league.
Mcavoy is insanely good and well worth his contract
Never gets old watching Bruins followers yap at each, all pretending to know everything about everything.
“The appeal to authority fallacy, also known as argument from authority, is a type of logical fallacy that refers to the different ways of fallaciously using the statements or opinions of authority figures in order to support a conclusion.
For instance, someone may assume that something must be true if a so-called expert believes it to be true, and no other evidence is needed.”
What does get old is people with nothing to say using this tired tactic to slag people with stuff to say.
On a hockey rumor website comment section, no less.
Sweeney should be gone before Cassidy.
Grzelcyk, Foligno, DeBrusk should be the first to go imho. Idk why no one is mentioning Coyle at a $5.25 mil cap hit for the next 4 years either? His 44 points last year were the 2nd most for his entire career…
They need to open spots for guys like Lysell, Studnicka, Lohrei, Beecher to grow at the NHL level. That Merkulov kid looks good too.
I think they should shed as much cap as possible this off-season and basically hit the reset button. I hate to say that because Marchy and Bergy are getting but the fact of the matter is that they missed their window with the perfection line. Bergy is probably a 2C on a championship club but the Bruins can’t afford or find the talent in the draft or ice time to develop a 1C and that mainly falls on Sweeney for his poor drafting and squandering of cap by signing all these vets to $3 mil+ when he could’ve gotten similar production from ELC players.
Now he has no first rounder, no cap, no ice time for younger players, an aging core, and no idea what he’s gonna do this off-season.
Not to mention the extensions for Swayman and Pasta he’ll have to think about but I’m also of the very unpopular belief that they should trade Pasta for a ransom because he flat out is terrible and honestly afraid of playoff style hockey.
And to clarify the end there about Pasta, he’s not a terrible hockey player but he almost completely disappears in the playoffs because he’s afraid of contact. Too many times I see pull away from 50-50 pucks because he wants to avoid the contact. I just think his cap hit will be too high in his next deal to justify his playoff performance and moving him now would be a good way to replenish high picks moved for Hampus and grab a good prospect or two.
I’ve talked myself out of it. If Sweeney is the one making the picks, do not trade Pasta for picks.
I really like Pasta as a player and his personality but he may need to be in a hockey trade with the current cap situation. I,like yourself, don’t really trust Sweeney. Teams are supposed to have high end talent that gets paid, sprinkle good draft picks trying to move into the line up and add some talent through free agency and trades. Drafting has been way off, when you draft players in the first round and say we see them as depth centers(Frederick and Beecher) you aren’t doing your job. You aren’t good enough to worry about depth when you don’t have enough D or scoring, draft the best players, period.
So unless Don can trade some players for assets like Carlo, Debrusk, Reilly, Gryz, Smith and use those assets to maybe trade with some other cash strapped teams like Vegas(Nicholas Roy and Hague) or Minnesota( Jacob Middleton and Brendan Dunhaime) who are all RFA’s and with the added cap space sign say Gubranson or Zadorov from Calgary or Andrew Copp or Ryan Strome from the Rangers then Pasta might have to go. Nick Smaltz and Lawson Crauss from Arizona wouldn’t hurt trading for either.
They need some depth scoring and some more grit.
This fact should have Sweeney fired on the spot… He hasn’t drafted an NHL player since 2017. Only Jeremy Swayman has made a positive impact on the team since 2017 and only him, Studnicka, and Vaakaneinan have even made the NHL…. That’s 5 years of drafts.
To Sweeney’s credit it looks like Lohrei, Lysell, Harrison, and possibly Jellvik look like potential NHLers from the last two drafts (although only Lysell is being touted with high-end potential)… but in 7 years, Sweeney has had 43 draft picks and drafted only 5 players that can be considered above replacement. 1 cornerstone Dman (McAvoy), 2 middle pair (Carlo and Lindgren), 1 middle six forward (DeBrusk), and 1 starting goalie (Swayman).
Only two players drafted round 4 or later have even reached the NHL (not counting Cam Hughes 1 game).
Some asterisk here though because the 2019-2021 drafts still need time to develop. For those who care heres a recap of those 3 drafts:
2021 looks okay with Lysell and Harrison, and Jellvik put up good numbers in Swed Jr so maybe some value there in the 5th round… Lysell has legit top-6, playmaking potential.
2020 looks thin aside from Lohrei… only had 3 other picks that year and two are playing in hockey East but haven’t looked all that great (Kuntar and Duran). Only seeing Lohrei as potential to be above replacement. He’s 6’4” lefty so he’d look alongside Carlo as a middle dman.
2019 looks not great considering Schmaltz could end being the best player in the draft as a 7th rounder. Beecher missed a ton of development time in NCAA due to injuries and getting moved down the depth chart on a crazy deep Michigan team. Good size and skills though so hopefully with good health and more ice time he can develop into the beast he looked like when they drafted him. Size and speed is a good combo. I think he could be a middle six guy or reliable bottom 6.
Sweeney’s drafted better in the 2nd round then the first. I bet they wish they still had dman Ryan Lindgren who they overpaid for Rick Nash with.
Please get a couple players who don’t mind contact, Marchand shouldn’t be the only guy trying to jazz up the team. A little tired of the Krejci talk to, guy left and did it like Gronkowski did, last minute and team didn’t plan for it in free agency. I respect and love Bergeron but they can’t wait until the last minute to find out what he is doing.