For as much as the Bruins still have pressing vacancies to address on their roster, the amount of options available to them appear rather limited in a stagnant, regressed offseason market rocked by a flat cap and other aftershocks brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Boston currently has about $6.6 million in available cap space this offseason, with a large part of that remaining capital likely diverted to retain its top RFA in Jake DeBrusk. But even with DeBrusk back in the fold (and potentially a return for Zdeno Chara), Boston’s team (as constituted) still has some series flaws.
Even though a forward corps featuring additions like Craig Smith and Ondrej Kase is a major upgrade from where Boston was a season ago (remember the top-six days of Brett Ritchie?), offseason surgeries for both David Pastrnak and Brad Marchand (and some extended recovery timelines) create some worry that the B’s might be best served adding another scorer up front to help supplement some of the production lost with both wingers on the mend.
But above all, the current state of Boston’s blue line remains the most pressing issue with this club. Even though Boston could try to slap a band-aid on its D corps by signing Chara to a lesser role and letting youngsters like Urho Vaakanainen or Jakub Zboril compete for those available minutes following the departure of Torey Krug in free agency, there’s a lot of risk involved in relying on a youth movement in such a crucial role — especially with Boston trying to orchestrate another Cup run with this aging veteran core.
How Boston goes about realistically improving that section of its roster, however, remains to be seen.
There aren’t plenty of suitable options left in free agency, while Boston balked at trades involving players saddled with absurd asking prices (Oliver Ekman-Larsson in Arizona) or hefty price tags (Nate Schmidt in Vegas).
Given the state of the market and the current fiscal standing of the B’s, it would appear as though a trade is the best route that Don Sweeney and Co. can take to add an impact blueliner to this roster, although it can’t be for a skater that’s going to break the bank and put Boston into a cap hell that has already ensnared many other teams already this fall.
Thankfully, it does appear as though there’s one logical target who remains the subject of many whispers circulating around a largely dormant trade market.
He may not draw as many headlines as an Alex Pietrangelo or an Ekman-Larsson, but a player like MacKenzie Weegar is precisely who a team like Boston should be targeting this fall now that the dust from a bizarre free-agency period has largely settled.
Weegar, 26, has been the subject of many trade rumors over the past few weeks, with Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reporting last week that Boston has been one of many teams that have “checked in” on Panthers blueliner.
Weegar, a restricted free agent with Florida, is due for an arbitration hearing with the Panthers on Nov. 8, but the hard-nosed defenseman is reportedly “disappointed” with the current state of negotiations on a new deal, according to David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period.
If contract talks continue to go south between both parties, Florida could very well opt to deal Weegar to a team willing to give him a more sizable pay day, especially if the Panthers (having already lost Evgenii Dadonov and likely Mike Hoffman this fall) get some forwards in return.
So, even if he’s not a household name, why should the Bruins be dialed in on bringing a blueliner like Weegar aboard?
He might be one of most underrated shutdown D in the NHL:
Let’s be frank. The Panthers have been able to score with the best of them in the NHL over the last few years. But on defense? Well, that’s a different story.
While the Panthers ranked sixth in the NHL last season in goals scored per game (3.30), they also ranked 28th in goals allowed per game (3.25). Granted, some of that falls on Florida's $70 million man in net in Sergei Bobrovsky, but it's not as though the veteran netminder has a stout D corps in front of him, either.
Still, Weegar has been one of the few bright spots in what was an overall underwhelming blue-line grouping for Florida in 2019-20. Earning a steady amount of minutes next to Aaron Ekblad last season, Weegar logged heavy minutes for the Panthers, averaging 20:07 of ice time per game, primarily on the left side (important to note as an area of need for Boston, even if Weegar is a natural right shot).
Weegar wasn't exactly tasked with easy assignments in Joel Quenneville's system last season, with 52.24% of his faceoffs during even-strength play coming outside of the offensive zone. And yet, despite the daunting matchups and the lack of favorable on-ice starts, a usually porous Florida defense excelled when Weegar was out on the ice for a shift.
Among the 166 NHL defensemen that logged at least 700 minutes of even-strength ice time last season, Weegar ranked 14th overall in expected goals against per 60 minutes at 2.07 (Charlie McAvoy ranked just ahead of him with an xGA/60 of 2.05). Playing alongside Ekblad certainly helps, but among that same pool of skaters, Weegar also ranked seventh overall in shot attempts against per 60 minutes (49.44) and 15th in scoring chances against per 60 minutes (22.94). Ekblad ranked 28th and 62nd, respectively, in those same two categories.
Pairing Weegar with either McAvoy or even another defensive force like Brandon Carlo could do wonders for a B's blue line that would suddenly boast a pretty impressive top-four unit, with an intriguing third pairing potentially filled out by the likes of Chara, Kevan Miller, Jeremy Lauzon, Connor Clifton, Zboril or Vaakanainen.
Regardless of where exactly he would fit in Boston's D corps, Weegar would provide plenty of value as a defensive anchor that's adept at snuffing out scoring chances.
(For reference on Micah Blake McCurdy’s individual impact charts via Hockey Viz — On the offensive side of things, you’d want to see a player providing positive numbers — with the red blobs signifying where the team is generating a majority of their shots from whenever said player is on the ice. Defensively, negative numbers are a sign that a team is snuffing out opposing scoring chances whenever said player is on the ice. As such, the blue blobs represent where the opposition’s shots aren’t regularly coming from. As seen above, opponents are generating much more in terms of excess shots around Grade-A ice when Weegar is on the bench. When he's out on a shift? There's a whole lot of blue out there.
Stats and graphs via Natural Stat Trick, Sean Tierney and HockeyViz.