Boston Bruins: Is Brad Marchand’s deal the best in the league?

At the end of the 2016-17 season, Boston Bruins winger Brad Marchand had the chance to cash-in coming off the back of his first NHL year at point-per-game pace.

Instead, he chose to take a far more team-friendly approach, which given his performance has continued to improve since then, gets cheaper and cheaper as time goes by. The Boston Bruins are only paying their 100-point man Brad Marchand, a meagre $6.125 million against the cap each year.

Now, there are caveats to that contract; by the time it expires Brad Marchand will be a 36 year-old, and we all know that the modern-day NHL is a young man’s game. With that said though; Marchand improved significantly year-on-year for each of his past four seasons with the Boston Bruins.

Looking around the league beyond entry-level deals held by the likes of Mitch Marner and Brayden Point, there’s very few players that proved better value for their cap hit versus point production last season.

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The obvious outlier in all of that is Nikita Kucherov – the Tampa Bay Lightning forward was paid just $4.76 million on his bridge deal, yet scored a remarkable 128 points for the season. Granted, it wasn’t enough in the end to get his Lighting team past the first round of the play-offs, but it certainly stood out as a remarkably cheap deal.

Fact is, perhaps the only player that comes close to comparable, at least from a point production versus cap hit perspective is Calgary Flames winger, Johnny Gaudreau on a $6.75 million a year contract.

It’d be unfair though to liken Gaudreau to Brad Marchand as the Boston Bruins’ winger’s game is far more well-rounded. While he does have his moments and gaffes that inevitably lead to goals scored against the team, he can play a 200-foot game when called upon.

No forward on the Boston Bruins roster saw more time-on-ice last regular season than Brad Marchand. Other than Patrice Bergeron, no other forward saw the same level of responsibility, given his usage both on the power-play and penalty kill by head coach, Bruce Cassidy.

The hope is that the consistent improvement; from 61 points to 85 points two years in a row (albeit one in an injury-shortened campaign), to his century mark this past season can continue from here.

Once the restricted free agents deals for the likes of Marner, Point, Auston Matthews, Patrik Laine and Matthew Tkachuk kick in, along with the $9.5 million per season new deal that Kucherov penned, it’s going to be incredibly hard to find better value.

Long may Brad Marchand continue to get it done for the Boston Bruins!