With free-agent frenzy over, will Bruins look to play waiting game with Charlie McAvoy, Brandon Carlo?

When Don Sweeney was asked back in June about the status of Boston’s crop of restricted free agents, the Bruins’ general manager was quick to note that there would be no set deadline for his club’s top offseason priority to be resolved. 

“We have to deal with our RFA players," he said. "As I’ve said all along, I don’t have a timeline for that, but they’ll be playing for Boston at some point in time this year prior to December 1. That’s the only real deadline we face, but we’ll be at it. We’ve been at it for a while with those guys.”

But now, with most of the free-agency frenzy in the rearview mirror and Boston still stuck in a holding pattern with a little over $8 million in cap space to work with, Sweeney likely wishes that both Charlie McAvoy and Brandon Carlo were brought in the fold much sooner. 

While Danton Heinen — the only one of Boston’s three RFAs eligible for arbitration — was eventually re-upped on a two-year contract extension last week, negotiations are set to continue between the club and McAvoy/Carlo, with that December 1st date standing as the one true deadline that both parties will be bound to.

(Any restricted free agent who does not sign by Dec. 1 cannot play for the remainder of the NHL season.)

The Bruins certainly don’t expect such a contract impasse to carry over into the regular season, let alone into the closing weeks of November. But given the fact that other RFAs such as Brayden Point, Mitch Marner, Mikko Rantanen, Matthew Tkachuk, Brock Boeser and more have also yet to sign the dotted line with their respective clubs, it looks as though the 2019 NHL offseason is going to be best characterized as a waiting game for a number of teams — some of whom are already dealing with a major cap crunch. 

“Very prominently,” Sweeney said of how the status of his RFAs would affect the rest of Boston’s offseason plans. “It was a reason why we had tried to be in front of things, but as I said, there’s no timeline to find a deal. Two sides have to find it, and there’s been a patient overall plan, but it’s pretty apparent around the league that the RFAs are being patient in that regard.”

It's largely been radio silence when it comes to RFA negotiations across the league, with TSN’s Bob McKenzie noting on Monday morning that he expects it to be a slow summer on that front, with a “vast majority” of RFAs still likely to be unsigned come the start of September. 

The Bruins are only a few years removed from being a similar position to the one that McKenzie predicts many clubs will face in the coming months — with Boston and David Pastrnak stuck in a contract stalemate that remained unresolved through the start of training camp. 

Eventually, Pastrnak and his camp blinked first, eventually signing a six-year, $40-million contract on September 14, 2017 that — with a $6,666,666 annual cap hit — continues to look more and more like one of the top steals in the NHL. 

In a perfect world, Boston would have liked to have both McAvoy and Carlo re-upped and under contract over a long-term basis before free agency even got underway on July 1 — allowing Boston to reassess its cap situation (as little as it would have been) and get a better grasp of where it stood on the UFA market. 

But such a scenario sailed past the B’s long ago. Now, as was the case with Pastrnak just two years ago, the waiting game might be the best course of action when it comes to re-signing both McAvoy and Carlo.

Obviously, resolving this RFA dispute seems to hinge upon a domino effect taking place, with Boston’s current cap space preventing the team from re-upping both McAvoy and Carlo without exceeding its limit in the process.

If we want to follow @EvolvingWild’s projected contracts for next season, then Carlo (six years, $4.3 million annually) and McAvoy’s new deals (six years, $7.25 million annual) would put Boston a little over $3 million above the cap limit .

Even if those projections are a bit inflated (McAvoy, in particular, could finish with a lower AAV if he opts to settle for a bridge deal), the scenario remains the same for Sweeney and his staff — cap space needs to be shed. 

We’ve already spoken ad nauseam over the last couple of weeks about possible avenues that Boston can take to free up cap space (from David Backes to Torey Krug to other veteran bodies on the blue line), so we won’t harp too much on who gets moved. But it’s coming, whether it be July, August or even in September — moves are going to have to be made. 

However, while the logical route does seem to involve the Bruins clearing said cap space before signing both McAvoy and Carlo to new deals, that’s not necessarily the case. 

Rather than making a flurry of moves in order to get the capital needed to ink both defensemen, Boston could very well wait it out until September and see if both players eventually settle for either team-friendly deals or contracts within market value, especially with training camp getting underway. 

While the Bruins would then likely still be over the cap limit of $81.5 million after signing their RFAs, both McAvoy and Carlo’s camp wouldn’t have nearly as much leverage if Boston had, say, traded Backes and Kevan Miller (freeing up $8.5 million in cap space) back at the start of July and had plenty more room to work with, financially. 

Waiting things out and signing their RFAs before clearing the cap is a route that is afforded to the Bruins based on the league’s offseason cap cushion — which states that a team can exceed the salary cap by 10 percent during the summer. 

However, once training camp ends, teams in the cap cushion NEED to clear that space to get back under the limit. 

So if Boston does want to hold off on RFA discussions with McAvoy/Carlo until the late summer/early September, it has some breathing room — while potential trade chips such as a Miller or John Moore likely won’t be able to be dealt until training camp rolls around anyway, given that both are coming off of major injuries/offseason surgery. 

If getting both RFAs under contract for fair value stands as Boston’s top priority, then perhaps the waiting game is indeed the way to go for Sweeney and Co. 

But there is a fair amount of risk involved. As we said, if Boston was to wait until September to sign McAvoy and Carlo, then it needs to get under that $81.5 million threshold before its season opener against the Stars on Oct. 3. And given that Boston’s best route when it comes to cap relief involves trades, you’re giving a lot of leverage to another team to bail you out from a major cap crunch. 

While a trade centered on a team absorbing Backes’ contract would already involve Boston adding quite a few sweeteners, you’d have to think that another team would demand even more if say, Boston needs to get that contract off the books and it’s the final week of September. Putting yourself at the mercy of another club can be a dangerous proposition, no doubt. 

And of course, the other doomsday scenario for the Bruins would involve the team itself blinking first when it comes to RFA negotiations with McAvoy and Carlo. While Pastrnak eventually signed in the middle of September, there’s no guarantee that Boston’s two latest RFAs will do the same, and if this waiting game does stretch into October and the start of the regular season, then Boston will have to clear said cap space ahead of time before completing new deals for McAvoy/Carlo — in order to avoid smashing through the cap ceiling. 

There’s plenty of options for the Bruins to take when it comes to resolving their latest RFA stalemate. And just about all of them can be labeled as risky.