Boston Bruins: Charlie McAvoy has no leverage to push dollar value up

The Boston Bruins are in an interesting place with regards to their stud young defenseman, Charlie McAvoy and his new contract.

Whereas across the league, there have been reports of the likes of Mitch Marner, Patrik Laine and Brayden Point using the threat of an offer sheet as leverage; the Boston Bruins won’t be at risk of this occurring with Charlie McAvoy.

He is in the unique scenario of being ineligible to be offer-sheeted and unlike Boston Bruins teammate, Danton Heinen, doesn’t have the ability to take the team to a salary arbitration hearing.

Perhaps the only leverage that Charlie McAvoy has is the simple suggestion that he may sit the year out. We’ve seen players sit out the opening few weeks in the past, and more recently, we saw one sit out half a season, but it’d be bold of the defenseman to hang that threat on the team.

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He loses even more leverage too with the fact that he has shown himself to be a little frail at times during his first couple of seasons with the Boston Bruins. In neither of those seasons has he cracked the seventy game mark in the regular season, though those same two campaigns, you could argue that he did if you factor in the post-season.

Either way, the Boston Bruins could make the argument that his regular season numbers represent an injury-prone player thus pushing the dollar value of his potential contract down. Nobody wants to be paying for a guy that spends a lot of time on the sidelines.

There’s been endless speculation as to how you fit the three restricted free agents under the salary cap; Danton Heinen has opted to take the team to arbitration to ensure the best financial reward possible. Brandon Carlo, we’ve yet to hear from with regards to his contract; there’s no suggestion that he’ll sit out or any sort posturing that we’ve heard of with regards to offer sheets.

Charlie McAvoy holds no cards aside from the fact he has developed into a definite number two defenseman in the past couple of seasons and could quite easily take that next step to being the franchise number one blue-liner.

His dollar value is expected to be around the $7 million mark, unless of course he hedges his bets that the new Seattle team will inevitably push the salary cap up. If that’s the case, we can fully expect his agent to be seeking a bridge deal for his client. Perhaps that is the only true leverage he has available to him.

Whilst all we come to pass eventually this summer, the current state of play leads any Boston Bruins fan to be ever so slightly nervous. They need to tie up their young guns long-term and way before training camp. Only time will tell if that actually does occur.