With the Boston Bruins being in salary cap trouble this season, here are five ways the team could create cap space.
The Boston Bruins haven’t done much this offseason in regards to free agency — their two biggest signings are middle-six forward Craig Smith to a three-year deal with an annual cap hit of $3.1 million and extending restricted free agent (RFA) defenseman Matt Grzelcyk for four years with an annual cap hit of $3,687,500.
Besides these two signings, the rest have been minor and include one-year, two-way deals to forwards Greg McKegg and Zach Senyshyn and goalie Callum Booth. Forward Karson Kuhlman was also signed to a two-year, two-way deal.
A couple of more important signings were defensemen Kevan Miller to a one-year deal with a cap hit of $1.25 million and Jakub Zboril to a two-year deal with a cap hit of $725,000.
After these signings, the Bruins are now left with just $6,657,686 in cap space to re-sign RFA left wing Jake DeBrusk and fill some holes like goalie depth, another solid left-shot defenseman (they could just bring back captain Zdeno Chara on another cheap, one-year deal), and a winger to fill the hole of either Brad Marchand or David Pastrnak while they are out recovering from offseason surgeries.
With the likelihood of DeBrusk’s new cap hit being between $3 and $5 million, the Bruins will be left with just $2 to $3 million in cap space. Moves will have to be made to open up cap room — here are five potential ones that could be done.