The Boston Bruins have two remaining restricted free agents, and it is nearly August.
While there are still many unsigned and fairly big-name players on the market, the Bruins situation is fairly unique. With just a hair under $7.295M in cap space, the Bruins have two top-four defenders to bring back. Those defensemen are Charlie McAvoy and Brandon Carlo.
Using EvolvingWild’s contract projections and Sean Tierney’s public.tableau visual, we can determine how expensive McAvoy and Carlo likely will be. Both McAvoy and Carlo are expected to garner a long-term, six-year deal.
For Carlo, EvolvingWild has him cashing in for $25,879,428, or $4,313,238 per season. As for McAvoy, he could receive a $43,561,662 contract, which amounts to an average of $7,260,277 per season.
With those two contracts put together, the total amount of money the Bruins spend this season would be $11,573,515. That would lead to the Bruins being $4,279,348 over the cap ceiling. There’s some work that needs to be done and moves to be made.
Torey Krug comes to mind, for me, when it comes to someone the Bruins could move to create room. For one, he is in the final year of his current contract that carries a cap hit of $5.250M. He would end up being 29 next off-season when he gets his new deal, and knowing Don Sweeney and how he handles contracts to older players (David Backes, looking at you), that’s a disaster waiting to happen.
Nothing against Krug but he is consistently involved in the physicality of the game, and you have to start to question how long his body can take that. However, I don’t believe he is a trade candidate anymore, with a recent interview airing with Krug stating he wants to play in Boston for the remainder of his career. While many athletes say that all the time, there’s no doubt Krug is a favourite within the fanbase and the organization, and likely will in fact stay for many more seasons.
With the recent Milan Lucic and James Neal deal taking place, there’s a sense that there may be ways to move a not-so-good contract. David Backes is that player for the Bruins who has a less-than-ideal contract that may need to be moved before the season begins in October.