The longest-tenured captain in the NHL will be back for another season, as the Bruins announced Saturday morning that Zdeno Chara has been signed to a one-year contract extension for the 2019-20 campaign.
The contract is worth $2 million, while the veteran defenseman can collect another $1.75 million in performance-based incentives. The 42-year-old blue liner signed a one-year extension with Boston back in March 2018, with a cap hit of up to $6.75 million.
Despite missing 19 games earlier this year due to an MCL injury, Chara has continued to serve as a top-pairing presence on Boston’s blue line — averaging 20:59 of TOI while tallying four goals and 11 points over 55 games.
Here are three takeaways from Chara’s new deal:
Bruins get great value — while creating some cap space:
While Chara actually earned a raise in 2018-19 with his one-year contract extension (he made $4 million during the 2017-18 campaign), the veteran defenseman took a bit of a paycut with this new deal — saving Boston some crucial cap space with a number of players up for contracts this summer.
With Chara’s new deal, the Bruins currently have about $13.8 million in free cap space going into the offseason — with the club needing to sign Charlie McAvoy, Brandon Carlo and Danton Heinen to new deals.
Update to Offseason Outlook with Chara re-signed. About $13.8M for Heinen, Carlo, McAvoy. pic.twitter.com/itkyOWHoGa
While Chara can earn up to $3.75 million this season with performance bonuses added in, if that additional $1.75 million puts Boston up over the cap, then the bonus money would get placed on next year’s cap.
Boston does have the space as constituted to re-sign all three of McAvoy, Carlo and Heinen to market-value deals. Even with an up-and-down start to the year due to injuries, McAvoy has turned the corner as of late and is poised to be Boston’s franchise defenseman of the future. A six or seven-year deal worth a minimum of $5.5 million (and likely more steered toward $6-$6.5 million annually) seems to be in the cards for the 21-year-old McAvoy.
While his value is a bit limited due to his offensive ceiling, Carlo is in the midst of the best season of his young career, with the 6-foot-5 defenseman still serving as a key cog on the PK and is poised to make a sizable impact this postseason after missing Boston’s last two trips to the playoffs due to injury. I’d expect he’d command about $4 million annually on a new contract. After an up-and-down season in 2018-19, Heinen might have to settle for a bridge deal — with an annual cap hit around $2-3 million.
With projected deals locked up for McAvoy ($6 million), Carlo ($4 million) and Heinen ($2.5 million), that would still give Boston about $1.3 million in free cap space for this upcoming season.
Now, with more youngsters like
Jake DeBrusk
and
Matt Grzelcyk
due for raises in 2020, more money will have to be freed up down the road, but for now, Chara’s new deal does give Boston some much needed flexibility.
Chara is still a top-pairing presence:
He might be 42 years old and doesn’t average an absurd 25-27 minutes a night anymore, but Chara is still a key member of this Bruins’ blue line. Leading a defense that has relinquished the third-fewest goals in the league at 186, Chara is still often tasked with shutting down the opposition's big guns up front — a facet of his game that he continued to carry out last season when he neutralized both
Auston Matthews
(1 goal, 1 assist in 7 games)
and
Nikita Kucherov
(1 goal, 1 assist in 5 games) during the playoffs.
Bruins might have a log-jam on defense:
Right now, these left-shot defensemen are all set to return in 2019-20: Chara,
Torey Krug
, Grzelcyk and
John Moore
. Add in both
Urho Vaakanainen
and
Jeremy Lauzon
, who very well could push for a role up on the NHL club this September, and Boston might have to make some decisions down the line this offseason in terms of freeing up some space. Depth is always vital, as the Bruins can attest to this season, but it seems unlikely that Boston would want to block Vaakanainen for another full season, while Moore will likely not want to be a 7th defenseman for another extended stretch in 2019-20.
