Boston Bruins: What do you give up in a David Backes trade deal?

The Boston Bruins would deeply love to renegotiate the lengthy term they gave an ageing David Backes a few years back. Instead they’re stuck trying to trade him away.

What is the price the Boston Bruins must pay to rid themselves of the David Backes contract? It’s not going to be a case of simply finding an overly friendly General Manager, it’s going to mean losing assets beyond just Backes to ensure a deal, that we’re all but certain about. But what assets?

Draft Picks

It could be as simple as losing a draft pick, most likely a first round one, if the Patrick Marleau deal that saw him traded from the Toronto Maple Leafs to the Carolina Hurricanes and promptly bought out, tells us anything.

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That or you hope that the Boston Bruins General Manager, Don Sweeney gets clever and offers up some combination such as a second round pick and another one the next season conditional upon the team’s performance.

It’d take a fair bit of back-and-forth, there’s no doubt about it, but it’d be well worth testing the waters around the league. The bigger challenge is finding a team that wants additional draft selections that David Backes would be happy to go to, given his contractual clauses.

Typically a team grabbing draft picks isn’t exactly what you’d call a contender. However, maybe there is still scope – maybe the Colorado Avalanche, who are much closer to contending that we might think, are game to make a deal.

Prospects

Aside from draft picks, the other big value-add the Boston Bruins could make on any David Backes deal would be to throw in a prospect. This part is challenging though as you don’t want to be dealing away someone with too much potential and regretting the move later on.

Equally though, the trading team isn’t about to settle for that player that will never graduate much higher than the American Hockey League or, at a stretch, the bottom line of third defensive pairing in the NHL.

The Boston Bruins cupboards are somewhat bare when it comes to prospects, so exciting a potential trade partner with a young gun could prove challenging. We’re talking the likes of Oskar Steen or Anders Bjork as potential throw-ins on a trade. Neither scream out deal-breaker to be quite honest.

Retained Salary

The exact purpose of a trade would be to rid the Boston Bruins of a nasty $6 million cap hit. However, it could prove impossible for them unless they retain some of said salary. Perhaps the limit of what they should be willing to offer here is 20%.

Reasonably though, teams still aren’t going to be too keen on an ageing David Backes at a cap hit of $4.8 million for the next two years.

The only retained salary that’d get this deal done would likely be much closer to 50%. If David Backes can still do a job for a team on their third line and provide some veteran leadership in the locker room, $3 million is likely a far more palatable cost.

Unfortunately for the Boston Bruins, such a retained hit wouldn’t exactly assist in their short-term needs regarding restricted free agent contract renewals.

All in all, the David Backes deal is going to prove incredibly challenging to move. What’s more, it only likely gets moved if there is additional pieces thrown in. How actively are the Boston Bruins in trying to move the player or are they genuinely fine with him as an expensive fourth liner?