Boston Bruins: Possible contract scenarios for Charlie McAvoy
The Boston Bruins have one major piece of work left to complete this summer, namely getting future franchise defenseman, Charlie McAvoy signed to a new deal.
There are many scenarios that could realistically play out when it comes to the Boston Bruins coming to terms with their young defensemen, not just Charlie McAvoy but also Brandon Carlo. Every day the pair remain without new contracts, the fan base gets a little more tense and a little louder in questioning why’s it’s not done yet.
Don’t get us wrong, we trust that the team is getting it done, but the waiting game isn’t fun for fans of any team with unsigned free agents. In the case of Charlie McAvoy, the Boston Bruins can’t even ask a favour of the Montreal Canadiens in offer-sheeting him (McAvoy isn’t offer-sheet eligible). After all, we all saw how spectacularly that failed with Sebastian Aho.
Work is being done though and progress is no doubt slowly being made. The Boston Bruins’ team president, Cam Neely has been quoted saying the following in an exclusive interview with NBC Sports Boston:
“We have five, six weeks hopefully to get something done. We feel like we should be able to get something done with both of these guys at numbers that make sense for us, and hopefully makes sense for them. I think we’ve done a really good job of kind of managing the cap and making sure that we’re OK to get these guys done.” – NBC Sports Boston
As such, you have to imagine that the team will make an announcement pre-training camp (hopefully) to tell us that all is good in the world and that Charlie McAvoy will be in a Boston Bruins uniform once more on opening night.
Worst case scenario: A training camp hold-out
Unlike other restricted free agents around the league, Charlie McAvoy doesn’t hold any rights to seek an offer-sheet from another team. In this sense, he can’t exactly put the Boston Bruins over a barrel.
Perhaps his only leverage in negotiating a deal is that he can refuse to sign continuously and eventually sit-out. It’s not without precedent for players to do it, most notably William Nylander of the Toronto Maple Leafs who last year sat out a whole half-year.
We’ve seen the likes of Andreas Athanasiou of the Detroit Red Wings threaten in the past to seek a deal in Russia’s KHL if his terms weren’t met. Charlie McAvoy still does have some aces in his pack, though we’d all be highly hopeful that he doesn’t choose, nor even have the need, to use any of them.
Any player that has pulled this stunt generally tarnishes their name and reputation around the league a little, though you can’t exactly question their reasoning. They want the financials they feel entitled to and sometimes you’ve got to leverage any means possible to get it.
The biggest concern for the Boston Bruins if Charlie McAvoy decides to adopt this approach should be that every missed day of training camp and possibly even every missed game is damaging to his ongoing development as a player. Not having the intensity of training camp at the start of the year may lead to him poorly performing across a significant chunk of the season.
Given that various Atlantic Division rivals have been improving their potential chances for this coming season, safe to say you want one of your top pairing defenseman pumped and ready to go on the first game night, not two weeks in.
Finding middle ground: A long-term contract
You might think that a long-term contract is the ideal scenario for the Boston Bruins, especially when it comes to Charlie McAvoy. However, I’d argue that this is purely the middle-ground.
With a long-term deal comes certain salary expectations. Compared to a shorter-term deal, the player has to hedge his bets on how much the salary cap may increase by and thus whether a deal paying let’s say 10% of the team cap at it’s commencement is only giving you 5% in seven years time.
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Couple that with the fact we have seen Charlie McAvoy has a slight propensity towards health problems and thus hasn’t yet played a full regular season and you might question whether a long-term deal is truly the smartest option for the Boston Bruins.
On the flip side, he has certainly shown himself to be a bonafide top-pairing defenseman in the NHL and at only 21 years-old, the New York native can certainly still improve further.
The huge figures out of restricted free agency are generally reserved for centers, though offensively-gifted defensemen have managed to find them in the past. Issue for Charlie McAvoy is his career production at all levels has always been roughly a point every second game, not the sort of average you can bump your salary up by advertising.
The obvious comparable contract that is routinely spoken about is the deal Aaron Ekblad signed with the Florida Panthers; $7.5 million for an eight-year term. Only concern with that is that the Boston Bruins then have to make moves to shoe-horn a new deal for Brandon Carlo under the salary cap.
It’s all one big juggling act, especially if the cap hit is high, as you expect with a longer term deal.
Best case scenario: A bridge deal at a nicer cap hit
The best case scenario is that Charlie McAvoy forgoes some dollars to give himself a bit more flexibility should the salary cap increase. There’s no doubt that an increase may well be on the cards with the new Seattle franchise coming into the league, after all.
A bridge deal would see the Boston Bruins give McAvoy maybe three or four years, meaning he still has restricted free agent status and they’re not buying any of his (bumper payday) unrestricted free agent years.
It is good for the Bruins in that it gives them scope to assess whether injuries are going to continue to be a concern for the player. After all, last season, he only saw 54 regular season games and the year before, only 63 games. Granted, he did appear in 23 play-off games at the tail of last season, but there certainly needs to be a little more proof of his durability.
These kinds of deals can backfire; our rivals, the Montreal Canadiens found that out with the signing of PK Subban to a bridge deal a few years back. He took a $2.875 deal for two years off the back of his entry-level deal, but turned that into a $9 million eight-year deal with his performances.
Of course, we want to get him signed but there are multiple possibilities, each with potentially risky outcomes to the security of the Boston Bruins’ cap space long-term. Just getting him signed isn’t all that easy, no matter how much we may suggest it on Twitter. If it was that easy, there’s absolutely zero doubt that Charlie McAvoy would’ve already inked a deal.
We trust that the Boston Bruins management are working away on a deal and trust that it will be the right one, in the meantime though it’s all one big ‘watch this space’.
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