Twice in the last month the Boston Bruins have been able to take a tempting sneak peek at an impact player expected to be available on the trade market that could address the biggest of their current roster needs.
Norwood, Mass. native and former Boston College standout Noah Hanifin is finishing up a stint with the Calgary Flames as he approaches unrestricted free agency and would give the Bruins the same kind of three-headed defensemen monster they fleetingly enjoyed late season with Charlie McAvoy, Hampus Lindholm and Dmitry Orlov after the trade deadline.
Beyond that, Hanifin has been a player that Don Sweeney has been trying to unsuccessfully land since trying to move up to select him in the infamous 2015 NHL Draft that instead saw the B’s stand pat and select Jakub Zboril, Jake DeBrusk and Zach Senyshyn with three consecutive mid-first round picks.
Both parties have gone their separate ways since then, but the rumors of Hanifin wanting to return home – and the Bruins being more than willing to bring him into the fold – have never fully gone away.
Hanifin stood out in Calgary’s impressive win over the Bruins in Boston a couple of weeks ago in the first game back from the NHL All-Star break, and even on Thursday night nearly pulled off a game-winner when his deflected point blast rang off the post in the closing seconds of the third period. Eventually Calgary won in an entertaining overtime by a 3-2 score on a Nazem Kadri winner, but the Bruins were not hanging their heads after taking 3-of-4 points in back-to-back road games against the Oilers and Flames.
“When you on the road it’s not always easy whether you’re playing in a back-to-back or not,” said Charlie Coyle, who finished with two goals and hit the 20-goal mark for the first time with the Bruins. “It’s always going to be a tough effort in somebody else’s building. Just play the right way, give a gutsy effort and play well for the most part. There are going to be some lapses, but you’ve got to grind it out and get these points. All these points add up and we want to make sure we rack up as many as we can.”
Hanifin finished with two shots on net and seven shot attempts in 24:34 of quality ice time while looking slick from the D-man position even as he might have been trying to do a little too much with four giveaways as well. Perhaps the local kid was trying hard to impress a Bruins team that he wants to be a part of after spending his nine-year NHL career in Carolina and Calgary while on pace for his best NHL season (on pace for 13 goals, 43 points and over 23 minutes of ice time).
But the bottom line is that Hanifin would greatly assist a Boston back end desperately in search of a trade deadline upgrade with Lindholm banged up, and Matt Grzelcyk and Derek Forbort struggling when they haven’t been in the lineup due to injuries. Parker Wotherspoon has been solid as an unexpected AHL callup and young D-man Mason Lohrei has played two very strong back-to-back games in his most recall from Providence.
But nobody is going to feel secure relying on either of them to perform optimally under Stanley Cup playoff pressure.
Hanifin feels like the ideal target for a Bruins group that will have ample salary cap space to sign him this summer, just as they did when they extended Lindholm and Taylor Hall after initially acquiring them at the trade deadline. It won’t be easy, though, and there is still a line of reasoning that the Bruins might be better positioned to just take a run at him in free agency if he went elsewhere at the deadline as a rental player.
That’s because the B’s don’t have the salary cap space to acquire the $4.95 million cap hit for Hanifin, and they don’t have any of the draft pick assets (no first, second or third-round pick in this year’s draft) to make a competitive offer. Sure, the Bruins have available prospects like Matt Poitras, Lohrei and Fabian Lysell and perhaps they could even include a defenseman like Grzelcyk to make the numbers jive salary cap-wise along with salary retention that seems a foregone conclusion at this point.
A trade piece like Seattle center Alex Wennberg feels like a more realistic trade target, though that will also require salary cap gymnastics for the Black and Gold.
Hanifin still feels like a longshot for the Bruins, though, based on the difficult spot they find themselves in a season where they were forced to bargain basement shot for players like James van Riemsdyk and Kevin Shattenkirk in free agency. It was so bad on Thursday, in fact, that the Bruins had to send Justin Brazeau back to Providence in order to clear enough salary cap space to call up Ian Mitchell as a spare defenseman after Wednesday night’s lower-body injury to Grzelcyk.
The 26-year-old Brazeau looked like he belonged in the NHL in his first two games with the Bruins, so the move was about nothing more than the B’s being salary cap-strapped.
That’s a big part of the reason guys like Anthony Richard ($775K), Jesper Boqvist ($775K) and Danton Heinen ($775K) have also been in the mix this season, but it was Richard who turned his speedy, aggressive style into an assist to Coyle for the game-tying goal on Thursday night. Richard threw an area pass up off the boards to a speeding Coyle, who collected the puck and snapped one past Jakob Markstrom to make certain the Bruins collected the overtime point in an eventual 3-2 OT loss at the Scotiabank Saddledome.
“That play on Coyle’s goal is a great example: He makes a smart play and puts it to an area and makes sure that we’re managing the game and moving north,” said Jim Montgomery of Richard. “Just his tenacity on pucks. He’s a guy that I thought looked tired in the first but found his legs in the second period.
“He’s got real speed…high-end speed. It’s the confidence to believe that you can play in the NHl and I think we’re seeing him have that now. The way he found his game is a maturation thing you want to see where if they don’t have their A-game, they can get to a B-game. I think he’s starting to believe that he belongs.”
Richard belongs and certainly the Bruins believe they belong in the postseason while still sitting atop the Atlantic Division with Florida making a big run at them. But pursuing a big target like Hanifin shows the Boston Bruins want to do more than simply “belong” when the postseason intensity turns up a few months from now.