Boston Bruins: What if Tyler Seguin was never traded?
The date is July 4th, 2013, and the announcement that was just made has left all of Boston utterly confused. The rising star wearing black and gold, Tyler Seguin was just sent off to the Dallas Stars for virtually chump change.
What would happen to the hockey world if this trade never happened? What if Tyler Seguin had remained with the Boston Bruins and even extended his contract to still be on the roster in 2019?
Would he be the first-line center and bonafide stud he is in Dallas? Or would he be buried in the line-up, sticking as a bottom-six, scoring center with Joakim Nordstrom and Danton Heinen on his wings?
How about Rich Peverley? While his story was tragic by all means, would he have had that same situation in Boston that would lead to his immediate retirement? Or would Peverley still be playing today?
How about Dallas? Where would they stand? Sure, Reilly Smith was good, but would he wind up in Vegas, just like he did after moving to Boston?
How about Loui Eriksson? Would he last in Dallas or would he, too, move on and join his current team out west in Vancouver? Joe Morrow has been a journeyman on the blueline, but would he have found a consistent role within the Stars roster if he had remained there?
While there are a lot of different situations and scenarios that come out of a ‘what if’ situation, there’s nothing quite like the Tyler Seguin trade being wiped from NHL history. It led to the Bruins missing the playoffs two years in a row.
Soon thereafter, former Boston Bruins GM Peter Chiarelli was fired. He wound up going to Edmonton and trading Taylor Hall. Would all these things league-wide happen if this trade didn’t take place?
If they don’t happen, then where would Edmonton stand? And Dallas? What about Boston? Would Chiarelli still be Boston’s GM? This is all too much to take in, and it would overload everyone’s brains tracking all this information down.
So let’s simply look at the Boston Bruins’ perspective with Tyler Seguin, ignoring every other piece of the puzzle.
A look at Boston’s perspective
In Tyler Seguin’s final season as a Boston Bruins roster member, he registered 16 goals and 16 assists for 32 points in a lock-out shortened 48 game season. He averaged 17:01 time on ice that year.
The next year, his first with Dallas, he played 80 games with 37 goals and 47 assists for 84 points, which remains as his career-high point total, goal total and assist total. He did all that while averaging 19:21 time on ice.
In the 2013-14 season, the year without Seguin, the Bruins deployed these five centers: Patrice Bergeron, David Krejci, Carl Soderberg, Chris Kelly and Ryan Spooner. That’s a strong center core, and Seguin primarily played on the wings when he was with Boston.
Here were the Bruins 8 wingers who played more than 30 games that year: Jarome Iginla, Reilly Smith*, Shawn Thornton, Jordan Caron, Milan Lucic, Brad Marchand, Loui Eriksson* and Daniel Paille.
*These players would not have played here if the Bruins never traded Seguin.
With Smith and Eriksson remaining on Dallas, that opens up time on the Bruins wings. Neither Eriksson (16:32) or Smith (14:42) averaged enough time to make up for the 19:21 Seguin averaged in Dallas.
That being said, if he played Eriksson’s 16:32 on the right-wing, Seguin would see a 14.6% decrease in deployment. Eriksson produced 37 points in 60 games with that ice time, and if you prorated his stats over 80 games, which is how many games Tyler Seguin played, using Eriksson’s point per game metric of 0.61, he would’ve had 49 points.
Meanwhile, as stated earlier, Tyler Seguin had 84 points, which amounts to a point per game total of 1.05. If we take away 14.6% of his deployment, he would have a point per game average of 0.9 instead. That would mean, in 80 games played with the Boston Bruins in the same role as Eriksson, Seguin would have produced 72 points instead of 84.
Tyler Seguin’s future with the Boston Bruins
The Bruins extended Seguin the year before they traded him. That was a 6-year deal worth $5.75M per season. It’s important to note that, despite playing wing with the Boston Bruins, he has found his success as a center in Dallas.
If Seguin were to shift to center, he would likely replace David Krejci, who would’ve had one year left on his deal starting the 2014-15 season. That would mean Seguin would play one last season on the second-line, left-wing spot, averaging the same time as Eriksson in his 2014-15 season, which was 18:29 time on ice.
With Tyler Seguin averaging 19:33 in his second year with Dallas, he would experience a 5.5% decrease in deployment. If he played the same amount of games in Boston as he did in Dallas (71), where he put up 77 points, he would instead produce 72 points, yet again. With Seguin’s versatility, it’s likely he would shift to second-line center and Krejci would either be traded or walk in free agency, rather than signing a 6-year deal worth 7.25M to stay in Boston.
If Seguin played the same minutes as Krejci up until 2018, when he got extended by Dallas, he would have had roughly these point totals, based on points per game and deployment changes: 78, 71, and 68 points, respectively. In total, over the last 3 years before his contract extension, Seguin totalled a projected 217 points as a Boston Bruins’ player.
In Dallas, those same three years, he produced 223 points. What this means is he produced a projected 6 points less playing as the second-line center in Boston compared to his actual stats in Dallas, as a first-line center.
Due to a smaller role, despite a similar production rate, Seguin would not have been handed the same 8 year, $9.85M contract. Due to being below Patrice Bergeron on the line-up in this ‘what if’ situation, he likely wouldn’t earn too much more than Bergeron’s $6.875M per season deal.
Tyler Seguin’s new deal?
At the time of Bergeron’s signing, he took up roughly 10% of the total salary cap, which was $69M at that point. When Seguin signed his extension, the salary cap was $75M, and if he were to sign at the same salary cap percentage as Bergeron in 2014-15, his contract would be an 8-year deal worth $7.5M per season.
With the exact same team roster today with Krejci and Backes (who likely wouldn’t have signed with Seguin on the roster) gone and replaced by Seguin’s new deal, the Bruins go from having just $7,294,167 in space, to $13,044,167.
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That would be enough to re-sign both Charlie McAvoy and Brandon Carlo, comfortably. They also could have added another player in free agency the year prior. But that’s too big of a question to answer.
With Seguin signing that new deal to remain in Boston, how would he fare? Seguin, who played all 82 games last season with Dallas, recorded 80 points. He did this while averaging 20:45 time on ice. Krejci, on the other hand, averaged 17:41 time on ice.
If Seguin averaged Krejci’s 17:41 last season instead, he would face a 14.8% deployment decrease. With that 14.8% decrease in deployment considered, Seguin would have been projected 68 points. That’s 12 points less than what he wound up getting in Dallas and surprisingly less than the 73 points Krejci got last season.
So was trading Seguin actually the right thing to do in the long run?
Conclusion to this madness
The Boston Bruins avoid hand-cuffing themselves to David Backes and David Krejci, as well as retaining Tyler Seguin at a cheaper price than he wound up being with Dallas. But there’s no saying he would have extended his contract with Boston. He could’ve wound up leaving in free agency and earning big money elsewhere.
Besides, based on projections, he would end up producing the same as Krejci anyways, give or take. He became a star in Dallas because he was given the proper amount of minutes to thrive, but in Boston, he would simply be a solid second-line center.
There’s also something else to look at. Would the Bruins have made the same moves had they kept Seguin? While I did this in my own scenario, it’s likely they would not have.
They may have gone out and signed someone other than Backes in that crop of free agents in the 2016 off-season that could’ve also been a bad deal. There’s a ton of different scenario’s that may have played out if the infamous trade never happened.
Another thing, do they draft the same way? Do they bring in McAvoy? How about not drafting Jake DeBrusk? Not re-signing Marchand? Trading away David Pastrnak?
There are just so many different things that could have happened and left the Bruins worse for wear if they did keep Seguin.
At the same time, however, they could have been even better. Maybe they beat the St. Louis Blues in the Stanley Cup finals this past season with Seguin on board.
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Salaries via Capfriendly, 2014-15 cap space info via Spotrac.