The moves to bring aboard Taylor Hall, Mike Reilly and Curtis Lazar were designed to support the 2021 Bruins on another potentially fruitful Cup run — supplementing a top-heavy and banged up roster with scoring touch, transition prowess and two-way acumen.
Already, Don Sweeney's pair of deals with Buffalo and Ottawa have shored up some glaring holes on the B's roster and potentially given this veteran core another kick at the can. Within just the lens of this year — one has to be awfully encouraged about what the trio of newcomers have brought Boston since arriving a little less than two weeks ago.
For the first time in a long time, it appears as though Bruce Cassidy and the B's have two dominant forward lines to deploy night in and night out, with Hall serving as the missing piece on a suddenly revitalized line next to David Krejci and Craig Smith — with Boston holding a 6-1 edge in goals scored and 21-10 advantage in high-danger scoring chances during their 73:13 of 5v5 ice time together.
On the blue line, Reilly has been a playmaking conduit — recording four assists over seven games and averaging close to 22 minutes a night with his new club. Along with Reilly, only three other defensemen in the entire league have recorded 19 or more even-strength assists so far in 2021 — Kris Letang, MacKenzie Weegar and John Carlson.
And with Lazar down the middle, Boston's fourth line has been rejuvenated — with Boston leading in scoring chances (24-15) when that trio has been on the ice together, despite having just 13.79% of their faceoffs set in the offensive zone.
So, yes — fair to say, all three of Boston's deadline pickups are already making a sizable impact on a Bruins team that has won six of its last seven games coming out of the deadline. But the moves that Sweeney struck to bolster this current club could benefit the Original Six franchise far beyond whatever fate is in store for Boston in the 2021 Stanley Cup Playoffs — especially when it comes to maintaining flexibility ahead of a busy offseason headlined by another flat-cap market, an expansion draft and looming free-agent decisions.
How so? Let's take a quick glance.
Avoiding major headaches with the expansion draft
Well, you had to know this was coming.
Combing over the looming Seattle Kraken expansion draft has been a regular topic of conversation for a few years now on BSJ — and the interest is certainly warranted, given that the writing seemed to be on the wall for some time that Boston was going to lose a young, talented asset to the NHL's 32nd franchise.
Such fear likely would have come to a head had Boston set its sights on deadline targets with term on their contracts — forcing Sweeney and Co. to likely protect Boston's new additions while leaving players like Matt Grzelcyk, Jake DeBrusk and others adrift for the Kraken to ensnarl.
But by dealing for a pair of pending UFAs in Hall and Reilly, not only do the Bruins benefit in 2021 by adding a top-six winger and top-four defenseman for the playoff push, but it also avoids the headaches of
what would have happened if Boston acquired someone like Mattias Ekholm — with Boston having to either give up one of its three coveted protection slots (in the expected 7-3-1 protection format - seven forwards, three defensemen, one goaltender) or switch to an 8-1 format (eight skaters, one goaltender) in order to keep Ekholm in the fold.
Now, instead of fretting over only having so many protection spots to cover so many key cogs on its roster, Boston can keep a majority of its roster intact — while also giving itself the freedom to sign pending UFAs like Hall, Reilly, Tuukka Rask, David Krejci and others after the Kraken expansion draft comes and goes on July 21.
While players like Hall, Reilly, Rask, Krejci and other UFAs like Sean Kuraly all will remain under team control until free agency officially begins on July 28, Boston does not need to use its protection slots on these players. And yet, while there might be some risk of Boston letting so many featured players hit the market instead of trying to sign contracts ahead of time, Boston does have some runway available when it comes to signing these players after the expansion draft — with teams granted an exclusive negotiating window to speak with its pending UFAs ahead the start of free agency.
So, IF Boston wanted to bring back guys like Rask, Krejci, Hall and Reilly, you could see a situation play out in which both team and player work out the ol' *nod and wink arrangement* — in which the framework of a new contract is hashed out, but both parties don't officially dot the i's and cross the t's until after Seattle takes its pick of a less loaded pool of available assets.
With players like Hall/Krejci/Rask/Reilly/Kuraly and more out of the running, Boston could hold steady with its regular 7-3-1 format, submitting a list like ...
Forwards (7): Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand, David Pastrnak, Charlie Coyle, Craig Smith, Jake DeBrusk, Trent Frederic
Defensemen (3): Charlie McAvoy, Brandon Carlo, Matt Grzelcyk
Goaltender (1): Dan Vladar
Now, that list can certainly change between now and July — and Boston is still in line to lose a nice piece to the Kraken, be it a player due for a nice pay raise in Nick Ritchie or a young, cost-controlled D like Jeremy Lauzon. Still, that beats losing guys like Grzelcyk or DeBrusk for nothing.
If Boston can make it through the expansion draft without relinquishing a top-six talent or top-four blueliner — AND retain some UFAs like Hall and others, then it's a win-win.
Granting themselves a window to assess low-risk moves
Now, granted — even though it's a small sample size, I think the ship has kind of sailed in terms of the Bruins worrying about whether these moves are going to pay off. As we noted above, the tangible production and underlying metrics have been very encouraging for Hall, Reilly and Lazar. And even if they weren't exceeding expectations, the bottom line was that Boston didn't have to relinquish all that much to get these guys in the first place.
Rather than dealing for players with term who very well could have not panned out during this trial-by-fire push to the postseason, Boston gave itself some wiggle room with guys like Hall who they could cut bait with this offseason if he truly couldn't get back to his scoring ways. Of course, as far as this thinking goes, we could be looking at a double-edged sword in a few months, as both a revitalized Hall and surging Reilly could be building cases for hefty paydays with other teams.
Still, when it comes to assessing the risks of bringing aboard UFAs, most of those concerns can often be negated based on what the cost was to acquire said players — and, of course, if those UFAs help you win right now. Perhaps Hall and Reilly do walk upon hitting the open market in July, but considering all Boston ended up relinquishing was Anders Bjork, a 2021 second-round pick and 2022 third-round pick to get them in the first place, that's a scenario that's much more palatable for the Bruins to accept, especially if both players continue to contribute during this current playoff push.
Financial flexibility and a clean slate
Don Sweeney has some serious decisions to make this summer.
Who's the man in net next season with Rask/Halak hitting free agency?
Are Jeremy Swayman and Dan Vladar ready for another major step forward?
Is Jack Studnicka ready to break into the lineup permanently next season? Can Charlie Coyle handle 2C duties? If not, is Krejci back?
These are just some of the many, many questions that need to be answered — all ones that could change the direction of this franchise drastically, both in terms of shutting the door on this Cup-contention window and positively/negatively impacting the club for years to come based on whatever direction Sweeney and Co. take.
Thankfully for the Bruins, they're in a better spot than most clubs when it comes to having the flexibility and freedom to be able to switch gears and really assess its roster this summer — due in large part to the amount of cap getting freed up by their pending UFAs.
With the upper limit of the NHL's salary cap remaining stuck in place once again in $81.5 million, teams already up against the cap or saddled with a number of hefty, long-term contracts are stuck in a tough spot, with few teams (other than perhaps the Kraken) willing to take said contracts off their hands given the state of the market.
But by dealing for UFAs instead of players under contract, the Bruins are giving themselves plenty of room to divert cash elsewhere, target other players in what could be another offseason filled with bargain deals or, of course, re-sign their pool of UFAs to new deals.
(A look at the Bruins' cap situation in 2021, 2022 and the years ahead — all courtesy of the fine folks over at CapFriendly. With the number of free agents Boston has, the B's are set to enter the new 2021-22 season with over $32 million in cap space. That gives Boston plenty of flexibility to either re-sign a hefty portion of its UFAs or change gears drastically and set aside some cash moving forward.)
With that much cap available, Sweeney and the Bruins have plenty of options when it comes to tailoring this roster to fit whatever timeline they envision for the franchise. It'd sure seem like a safe bet that Boston would be very interested in bringing players like Rask, Krejci, Hall and Reilly back in the fold moving forward, considering all four can and should keep Boston as viable Cup contenders for the next few years (with the current state of the market and the age of Krejci/Rask likely leading to much more cost-effective contracts than the ones they inked back in 2014 and 2013, respectively).
But Boston could also set aside some of that cash in anticipation of big pay raises for the likes of Charlie McAvoy in 2022-23 and David Pastrnak in 2023-24. Or they could be eyeing other free agents in the coming years — with Aleksander Barkov set to make BANK in 2022 as a UFA (you throw your checkbook at him 100 times out of 100 times if he hits the market).
So yes, by bringing aboard guys like Hall and Reilly, the Bruins are in a much, much better spot than they were just a few weeks ago — and could very well be setting themselves up for a promising Cup run once again this summer. But with so many pending UFAs in the mix (and with plenty of cap space to either re-sign them or spend that cash elsewhere), Boston might be getting the best of both worlds when it comes to contending now while having the freedom to reload, retool or wipe the slate clean come the offseason.
It's a set of options that are rarely afforded to a team — at least not within the span of the same offseason.
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B's still waiting on Kase
With Patrice Bergeron currently day-t0-day with a lower-body injury and Brandon Carlo still week-to-week with an upper-body injury, the B's still have a ways to go before they can *hopefully* roll out a full lineup ahead of the postseason. Trudging ahead without a key cog in the lineup has been par for the course for Boston this season, especially on the blue line — with the usual suspects in Carlo, Charlie McAvoy, Matt Grzelcyk and Kevan Miller only appearing in the lineup together for six of the Bruins' 46 games so far this season.
And while the defense has been particularly ravaged by injury in 2021, no player on Boston's roster has had tougher luck than Ondrej Kase.
Kase —who seemed to suffer an apparent concussion after taking a hit from Devils winger Miles Wood back on Jan. 16 (Boston's second game of the season) — has been on the shelf for over three months now, with the 25-year-old winger not even spotted at any full-team practices since taking that hit. Speaking last month, Cassidy acknowledged that any production that Kase might be able to bring Boston down the stretch would be "gravy", but did note Thursday that the forward could be getting close to charting some sort of timeline for a return.
https://twitter.com/ConorRyan_93/status/1350522248545886208
“He's skating and he's working out every day and seems to be progressing in that area or not regressing, I guess is a better way to put it," Cassidy said. "Until he gets out with us and we see him live with the group, it's hard to say. So I don't have a great answer for you to predict the future for him. Obviously we're running out of race track, so to speak, to get him in the lineup here. Not going to join us on this trip. But maybe (when) we get home, there will be some positive news for him. He would need some games, obviously to get up to speed. It's been a long time. So we'd have to factor in that, but it'd be nice to have that option."
Obviously, from just a pure X's and O's standpoint, getting a speedster with skill and scoring touch (albeit, not quite yet with Boston during his tenure here) like Kase back in the lineup would be good news for Boston, giving the team another weapon that could fight for minutes on a third line with Jake DeBrusk. But in the grand scheme of things, we should continue to temper expectations in terms of Kase's availability, not only because of unpredictability when it comes to returning from these types of injuries, but also given that this is at least the fourth documented concussion that Kase has suffered in his five-year NHL career.
Would Kase help this team? Certainly. But health (especially when he eventually hangs up his skates) should remain at the forefront for Kase when it comes to charting a course moving forward.
Other news & notes:
- Stick tap to Sharks forward Patrick Marleau — who played in his 1,768th career game on Monday night in Vegas, breaking Hall of Famer Gordie Howe's record for the most in NHL history. The 41-year-old Marleau began his career with San Jose in the 1997-98 season — before Charlie McAvoy, Trent Frederic, Jack Studnicka and Jeremy Swayman were even born. Sheesh.