Boston Bruins: Connor Clifton signs new deal after breakout year

Connor Clifton has signed a new three-year deal with the Boston Bruins after making his main roster breakthrough this season.

As one of the Boston Bruins restricted free agents this summer, Connor Clifton was a player you expected to be re-signed. He may not carry the name value or skill of the big three names, Charlie McAvoy, Danton Heinen and Brandon Carlo, but he offers good home-grown depth on the blue-line.

At the start of the season just gone, if you told Connor Clifton he was signing a three-year contract extension worth $3 million, having played in a Stanley Cup Final, I think he’d likely have told you that you’re joking.

Connor Clifton started the year, after all, probably about twelfth in the Boston Bruins’ organisational depth chart on defense. He progressed up that depth chart though as more and more regulars went down injured over the course of the campaign. By the time he made his NHL debut, the roster had been decimated by injuries, so what did Connor do?

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He made the most of it, of course. He eventually ended up sticking around for 19 regular-season games in the NHL and a further 18 games on the Stanley Cup Playoff run, even finding himself bumped up the line-up to partner Bruins’ captain Zdeno Chara at one point.

A three-year deal worth $1 million per season may seem like a slight overpay, but to have home-grown depth is great for any of the guys in Providence to see; it’s that reminder to take your chance should you be called upon and grab it with both hands.

If the Boston Bruins prove successful in shipping the somewhat less appealing deals of John Moore and Kevan Miller, you’d make a very safe bet that Connor Clifton starts the year as at the very least seventh on the depth chart, if not with a regular spot in the line-up.

Not a bad result at all for the former captain of Quinnipiac University.