With the sound of skates etching into the frozen sheet at Warrior Ice Arena just days away, the last thing some fans want to hear at this point of the offseason is the always enthralling discourse regarding cap space and the fiscal web that Don Sweeney and the Bruins will need to untangle at some point in the coming months.
But like it or not, such is the hand that the Bruins have been dealt this season, mostly by their own doing.
And even though the Bruins — who are currently more than $2 million over the cap upper limit of $82.5 million, per CapFriendly — can avoid penalties in the short term by placing both Charlie McAvoy and Brad Marchand on LTIR while they lick their wounds, sooner or later — a domino needs to fall.
Because in order to facilitate both stars’ respective returns (and especially, their cap hits), the Bruins are going to have to be below that $82.5 million threshold by the time both are given the green light to play (potentially as soon as mid/late November).
Of course, getting a top-five defenseman in McAvoy and a top-five winger in Marchand back in your lineup is a mid-season development that any team would welcome. But the Bruins are in such a spot financially that the best course toward freeing up that cap room might involve removing proven NHL assets off the roster — something that Don Sweeney noted in his last meeting with the media in August.
“I hope we've done significant math to be able to put the pieces together,” Sweeney said of Boston’s cap calculations. “We have some challenges, as do several teams and how we do that through trade or be it through waivers that really all teams are going to have to face. We don't have an issue certainly through November. We don't have an issue because of LTIR and the likelihood that will be an LTIR with the injuries we have, the amount of injuries we have.
“But coming out of it is the math challenge. And yeah, we'll have to unwind a little bit. But we have some mechanisms to be able to do that. We know what the leverage will be and, you know, you just don't know what's going to happen between now and then anyways. So, we're prepared to go in a couple different directions to explore what we have to, but we have mechanisms in place to be able to accomplish the goal.”
So, if the Bruins do indeed need to move a player off the roster at some point this fall, who might be on the chopping block in order to give the club a bit more financial breathing room?
Mike Reilly
A certain bottom-six forward might be the first player that comes to mind for B’s fans when it comes to a potential cap casualty, but in terms of the most realistic option for the Bruins — it sure feels like Reilly is at the top of the list.
After a fantastic first stint with Boston in the spring of 2021, Reilly had more of a so-so 2021-22 campaign with the B’s, posting 17 points in 70 games and appearing in five of the club’s seven playoff outings against the Carolina Hurricanes.
While the puck-moving Reilly remains an analytics darling thanks to his smooth transition game and crisp first passes, some of those talents were negated last year by D-zone lapses that often led to pucks in the back of Boston’s net. By the time Hampus Lindholm arrived in March, Reilly was essentially tabbed as the odd man out on the left side, with injuries standing as the primary avenue for him to get reps down the stretch.
Granted, with Matt Grzelcyk currently sidelined through at least the first month of the 2022-23 season, the B’s are going to need Reilly in place for likely top-four minutes. But by the time the B’s D corps gets itself back to full health, Reilly seems like he could be staring at another situation where he’d be relegated to the seventh D spot, especially given that both he and Grzelcyk’s skillsets are quite similar.
Of course, having a player with Reilly’s talents as your spare D is a pretty great luxury to have. But after signing a three-year contract last summer, Reilly likely wouldn’t be too keen on spending large swaths of the season up on the ninth floor, nor would the Bruins want to keep under-utilizing an asset who costs $3 million against the cap.
If you’re looking for a situation that could benefit all parties, a Reilly trade could allow Boston to shed some cap space and ensure that the player earns meaningful reps elsewhere. Reilly is a good player, one that, even if the roster numbers don’t exactly work here in Boston, deserves to be an everyday blueliner in this league.
Nick Foligno
With the buyout window now come and gone, it seems as though the Bruins are looking to give Foligno another extended look to see if there’s still something left in the tank.
There’s no question that the organization and the players in the room love Foligno’s effort, positivity and presence both on and off the ice, and the case could be made that last year was hampered by lingering injuries that further sapped the 34-year-old of expected offensive production.
But given Foligno’s declining numbers over a rather extended sample size (he has scored 19 total goals in the last three seasons — a total of 180 games), one has to wonder if Foligno can continue to stay in this B’s lineup if those numbers continue to crater — especially considering that there are a number of promising young B’s players (John Beecher, Marc McLaughlin, Oskar Steen) who are chomping at the bit to earn minutes in the bottom-six unit this season.
A trade is probably unlikely for Foligno, not with the Bruins likely having to include a pick or a prospect in order to entice a team to take the forward off their hands. But if Boston was to eventually waive Foligno (saving about $1.125 million), it could be enough to get under that upper limit, especially when factoring in things such as banking cap space, manipulating the number of players on the roster and more. Perhaps that $1.125 million will be enough for Boston to get under that ceiling, but it’d be awfully close.
Craig Smith
Much like Reilly, Smith makes sense as a potential cap-dump trade target. After all, plenty of teams would line up at the chance to acquire a shot-first forward on an expiring deal who has generally been a consistent middle-six regular in the NHL for years (15+ goals in seven NHL seasons).
But unlike Reilly, who could be on the outside looking in at regular minutes once Grzelcyk returns, Smith can and should be penciled into that 3RW spot all season long for Boston — barring some massive strides made by a youngster like Fabian Lysell.
Even though moving Smith’s $3.1 million cap hit would help solve Boston’s issues, a win-now team like the Bruins could really use a 15/20-goal foot soldier like Smith in their lineup this season — because rolling the dice with a 19-year-old Lysell or even a McLaughlin stands as quite the gamble for a team that doesn’t have a lot of room for error.