On the same day in which a veteran stalwart on Boston’s D corps retired in Kevan Miller, the Bruins locked up another defensive anchor long-term — as the club announced Wednesday that it signed Brandon Carlo to a six-year contract with an average annual cap hit of $4.1 million.
Carlo, 24, was in line for a pay raise as a restricted free agent this offseason, with both team and player opting to cross the t’s and dot the i’s over a longer-term deal than the two-year, $5.7 million bridge contract that he agreed to when he first hit RFA status back in the summer of 2019.
“The Bruins are very pleased to have extended Brandon on a long-term deal,” said Don Sweeney. “Brandon is a player who has grown into a foundational defenseman with our team while also emerging as an important leader on and off the ice.”
The Colorado Springs native has played all five years of his NHL career with the Bruins, serving in a top-four role and PK ace ever since breaking into the league as a 20-year-old and skating on a top pairing with Zdeno Chara back in 2016-17. In his career, Carlo has averaged 20:13 of ice time per game and logged 324 games in a black-and-gold sweater.
While many roster transactions have largely come to a standstill over the last few weeks as teams await the Seattle Kraken expansion draft, Boston’s desire to cross one offseason task off the to-do list in Carlo makes plenty of sense within this current time frame. Even though Boston likely won’t sign an unrestricted free agent like a Taylor Hall or David Krejci ahead of the Kraken draft (as it would remove a coveted protection spot for Boston), Carlo was already expected to be protected by Boston during the draft — so no harm in locking him up now before the offseason really ramps up.
BSJ Analysis
The optics regarding Carlo after this past season aren’t quite as sterling as they’ve been in years past — but granted, a lot of that is more a matter of unfortunate circumstance, rather than an indictment on Carlo’s own game.
He might have appeared in 27 games, but you could honestly chalk up the 2021 season as a lost year for Carlo — who was sidelined after a cheap shot from Tom Wilson sent him to the hospital with a severe concussion.
Carlo returned to the ice after close to a month on the shelf, only to lose another month of action due to an unrelated oblique injury. Unfortunately, concussions issues resurfaced during the postseason, with a heavy but clean check from Cal Clutterbuck knocking Carlo out of Game 3 of Boston’s second-round series against the Islanders. Carlo did not return for the remainder of that series, with a shorthanded B’s defense subsequently crumbling over the next three games.
Boston’s defensive structure crumbling both at even-strength and on the penalty kill against a largely pedestrian Islanders offense following Carlo’s exit might have presented a compelling argument as to why Boston wanted to keep Carlo in place as a long-term fixture on their defense.
But that term also presents risk if injuries continue to derail Carlo in the coming years. While Carlo has already piled up a number of injuries over his five seasons as an NHLer, he stressed during a Zoom call on Wednesday afternoon that he’s felt 100 percent for over a month now — echoing sentiments he shared back in June that he wasn’t concerned about future issues with regards to the bad luck he was dealt in 2021.
“No, not at this point, not at all. I think this year was obviously a struggle through these injuries,” Carlo said. “It’s no fun, but I’m not going to sit here and get discouraged or think that my career is heading down a wrong path because of a couple concussions. I hope this is the last one of my career and hopefully I can play as long as possible, but for how I’ve recovered from these, I don’t feel like there’s any issue there.”
Another string of injuries could really flip the verdict on this deal, but all things considered — the Bruins have to be thrilled about locking up a top-four stalwart to such a fair deal — especially as far as term is concerned. So long as Carlo avoids the injury bug, that $4.1 million annual payout could look like a bargain in due time.
Even though the Bruins and every other NHL team are still constricted by a flat salary cap in wake of the economic turmoil brought upon by COVID-19, this hard limit of $81.5 million will not remain fixed in place forever — especially once more revenue is brought in from Seattle and the NHL’s lucrative new broadcasting deals with ESPN and Turner.
As such, this is a deal that should only get better over time as more cap is made available to clubs. It’s why even though Charlie McAvoy is due for a LOFTY raise next summer, the wise choice would be for Boston to try to lock him into a long-term deal in anticipation of a higher cap ceiling in short order.
But beyond just charting out Carlo’s future value as far as cap dynamics go, $4.1 million is already more than fair considering what the stay-at-home defenseman offers this team in the present.
Boston’s impermeable defense suddenly becoming mortal against the Isles shouldn’t really have come as much of a surprise, as scoring chances have regularly gone to die when Carlo has been out patrolling the blue line.
Over the last three seasons, there have been 158 NHL defensemen that have logged at least 2,000 minutes of 5v5 ice time. Among that pool of skaters, Carlo ranks second in goals against per 60 minutes with a rate of 1.76 — trailing only his teammate, Matt Grzelcyk.
While Carlo’s game is pretty much established at this point as a shutdown option that’s not going to pile up points from the blue line, he’s generally excelled on a pairing when complemented by a puck-moving partner — headlined by his three seasons next to Torey Krug.
The 2021 season found Carlo stuck with more of a rotating cast of characters on that second pairing, but the results were most encouraging when he was next to either Grzelcyk or Mike Reilly.
If Boston is able to acquire another legitimate top-four blueliner this offseason (Mattias Ekholm? Perhaps Ryan Suter?), there's a lot of appeal in sticking Grzelcyk and Carlo as a shutdown option.
It might seem like an odd tandem, but Cassidy deployed that duo in such a role last year — with Carlo’s netfront presence and Grzelcyk’s transition and breakout ability limiting the number of chances that the opposition could generate in Boston’s zone.
Despite having just 44.26 percent of their faceoffs set in the offensive zone (third-lowest among the 17 Bruins D pairs with at least 50 minutes of ice time this season), the Bruins still held a 57-41 edge in shots on goal and a 57.3 percent shot share during Grzelcyk-Carlo’s 98:13.
Sure, Carlo’s injury history presents some risk, but you could have also made the argument that McAvoy presented a similar risk before his first bridge deal after missing various chunks of his first two years due to a myriad of health issues.
Concussions stand at the forefront of Carlo’s injury woes and will likely loom over the next few years as Carlo looks to put the 2021 campaign in the rearview mirror, but even with those risks — it’s hard to fault the Bruins for making their move and locking up what should be a foundational piece of this Bruins defense through 2027.