It’s the same thing every year: Trade deadline day is approaching in the National Hockey League and the Boston Bruins seem to be linked to everyone on someone’s trade board.
We all know that General Manager Don Sweeney is as tight lipped as they come. Yes, I’ve nailed a Bruins trade or two in the past, but never did the information come from anyone within the Bruins organization. Sometimes you get a whisper from an agent. Sometimes you get information from someone affiliated with a team not even involved in the trade. But never from the Bruins.
Often what you get is someone looks at the Bruins roster and what they deem as a need for the team and try and find a fit when the Bruins are actually looking in another direction. But never a whisper from Sweeney.
Sometimes you get lucky and know the right person at the right time. Back in 2019, I was adamant that the Bruins were after Brayden Schenn from the St Louis Blues and a few times they were close to reaching an agreement. I spoke about it openly several times. But it wasn’t until May of 2019, during the playoffs that Elliotte Friedman broke the news on national TV on how Schenn almost became a Bruins and how Schenn received a call from his agent and he went to bed thinking he was going to the Bruins. But not a peep from Sweeney. I just got lucky.
In 2022, it was Hampus Lindholm and if this site existed back then, it would be the first and only place you would have been hearing it. But again, the Bruins were hush top to bottom and I just got lucky.
Last season, a historic one, they were being linked to just about everyone but Dmitri Orlov, Garnet Hathaway and Tyler Bertuzzi, the players they actually did acquire. Because there wasn’t the slightest indication from Sweeney.
This year, they have been linked to Elias Lindholm, Noah Hanifin, Vladimir Tarasenko, Anthony Duclair, David Perron, Jacob Middleton, Chris Tanev and a slew of others you could build a 20-man roster with.
It is absolutely quite possible someone has heard through the grapevine that Sweeney and company have made a phone call asking about the availability of those players. I wouldn’t expect anything less because that’s his job. But don’t expect anything but the standard “if we can improve the team now and moving forward, we’ll do our due diligence and do what is best for the Boston Bruins” response from Sweeney.
Plenty will be written between now and March 8. Some of it will make sense, some of it will require some common sense.
Example: Back in 2021, there was a (reported) potential trade between the Edmonton Oilers and the Bruins. It involved the Bruins trading Jake DeBrusk and a third-round pick to the Oilers in exchange for Kailer Yamamoto. Forget for a moment that the proposed deal didn’t make sense from an asset point of view. A simple look at both teams salary cap situation at the time would have you shaking your head. I wrote extensively about it but Bruins fans were still threatening to burn down TD Garden if this deal happened. But this deal couldn’t happen. DeBrusk had an AAV of $3.675 million at that time, Yamamoto had an AAV of $1.175 million. At the time, the Oilers had just under $500,000 in cap space. So, how were they going to fit in the remaining $2 million? Some logic here from the writer would have been nice.
That same logic needs to be applied to the Bruins when they are being linked to someone. With little to no cap space at hand, how are they going to fit that player under the cap?
Let’s use Duclair as an example. He carries an AAV of $3 million. And even if the Bruins were to place Matthew Poitras on LTIR, they wouldn’t have enough cap space to acquire him. The most common response to that is to trade Derek Forbort or Matt Grzelcyk. Sure, but ask yourself why would the San Jose Sharks want them since they are both pending free agents? You could negotiate for them to take salary back but actual cost now for Dubois would be the asset the Sharks want in return plus an asset to take on the contract of Forbort or Grzelcyk. That doesn’t fit the “cheap to acquire” label attached to Duclair. Further to that label being misleading, you could get the Sharks to retain, but that always comes at the expense of another asset.
Not to mention that you now need to replace one of Forbort or Grzelcyk’s roster spots. You would then be left with less cap space.
Again, plenty will be written between now and March 8. I understand how important it is (to some) to draw in traffic and to some, it’s a livelihood. Personally, I don’t care. The message here is that as a fan, you have to sift through and determine for yourselves whether there is some merit to a “trade proposal” or “rumor” or not.
Because you’re going to have to do a lot of sifting over the next couple of weeks.
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Dom - Hockey 