Boston Bruins: Will we see bridge deals for the restricted free agents?

Could bridge deals be the way to solve the salary cap issues that the Boston Bruins are currently encountering?

With Danton Heinen agreeing to a new two-year deal with the Boston Bruins with a cap hit of $2.8 million per season, there’s limited money left over for the remaining two restricted free agents, Brandon Carlo and Charlie McAvoy.

You have to start wondering; does it make sense from the Boston Bruins’ perspective, and indeed the players’ perspectives to sign bridge deals and seek a bigger payday in a couple of years’ time.

The Danton Heinen deal certainly suggests that the Boston Bruins would be willing to work with shortened contract terms to ensure they secure Carlo and McAvoy for the next couple of seasons. The biggest bonus from a team perspective is that they’ll have other salary coming off the cap in the meantime.

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If you can put the contract negotiations off for two more seasons, suddenly there’s a bit more flexibility. At the end of that campaign, among those coming off their current deals are David Krejci ($7.25 million cap hit), David Backes ($6 million cap hit) and Tuukka Rask ($7 million cap hit). That means there will be $20 million going spare that off-season.

Even if you renew Krejci and Rask, you’d have to expect their values have diminished at least a little by then. After all, they’ll be 35 and 34 years old, respectively.

You’d like to assume that the Boston Bruins can make it to the end of this campaign with McAvoy and Carlo on two-year deals, but the salary cap issues don’t stop there. At the end of this coming season, Jake DeBrusk and Torey Krug are among the names that’ll be seeking raises.

Kevan Miller has $2.5 million coming off the cap and Krug’s own $5.25 million is freed too; you’d assume most of that has to be re-invested into Torey Krug alone. Where do the Boston Bruins find the extra cap space then for the likes of Jake DeBrusk, Karson Kuhlman and Joakim Nordstrom? And of course, you’d expect Zdeno Chara to end up back another term and possibly Jarsolav Halak in the backup role too.

Do you hedge your bets, work hard on convincing the current restricted free agents to take slightly lower salaries and short-terms, with the promise of bigger pay cheques in a couple of years?

Or do you see the writing on the wall and know that something has to give somewhere. The Boston Bruins are in quite a significant hole salary-cap wise and need to clear out some of the bigger deals. The challenge is that they’ve proven this last term that the roster is still highly competitive. It’s not as easy as sending out a letter and saying we’re rebuilding.

It’s fair to say that this team has just as good of a chance at making the Stanley Cup Final this coming season as it did last. How do you ensure Carlo and McAvoy are both part of that and aren’t disillusioned by any of the team’s financial decision-making?