The Boston Bruins have pulled off an absolute steal, managing to renew second-choice goaltender Jaroslav Halak for another season at a very low cost.
In a pending free agency that sees other bigger name goaltenders such as Corey Crawford and Braden Holtby potentially hitting the market, there was always a risk the Boston Bruins might end up overpaying for Jaroslav Halak.
By locking in Halak for just one year and doing so at a cut-price $2.25 million, Bruins’ General Manager Don Sweeney has pulled off a stroke of genius. Let’s not forget that this current (suspended) season, we’re paying him $2.75 million – that saving of half a million could be the difference between renewing Torey Krug or not!
Obviously age played a role in this decision, with Halak turning 35 in just over a week’s time; perhaps the element of this contract structure we should talk about with that in mind is the fact that Sweeney structured a base salary of $1.75 million with the rest based on bonuses.
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A signing bonus of $500,000 is just reward for taking a discount to stick around, while the $1.25 million bonus for playing 10 games is all but guaranteed to be met, but the Boston Bruins have shown some of their financial flex by building the deal in this manner, rather than straight take-home salary!
It’s hard to judge what will happen at the end of this season what with lost revenues and the like, but this deal is surely a comfortable fit within the Boston Bruins’ salary cap situation regardless.
Very few teams in the NHL are paying less against the salary cap for a goaltender that last year starred in 40 games with a 2.39 goals against average and save percentage of 0.922, and this year has seen 31 games with those numbers only weakening slightly to 0.919 and 2.39.
To have Jaroslav Halak back in the black and gold as a contender for the starting spot on any given night is a huge boost for the organisation.
Tuukka Rask will no doubt be pleased to have the competition, but also the knowledge that he can have a few extra night’s off and the team isn’t likely to suffer any sort of score blow-out as a result.
It’s hard to say what the rest of this year nor next year look like in the NHL, but it’s a safe bet that this piece of business by Don Sweeney will look good regardless.
It does mean that both Rask and Halak are on expiring deals at the end of next year, but with any luck Dan Vladar will be ready to impress by that point, especially if he has another impressive year in the AHL. At the season’s pause, he was rocking a 1.79 goals-against-average and save percentage of 0.936 – strong numbers to say the least.
Time will tell with regards to his progress; in the meantime, Jaroslav Halak and Tuukka Rask are among the strongest goalie pairings in the league.