Boston Bruins: Revisiting Jeff Gorton's 2006 Trades as Interim GM

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Jeff Gorton was the Bruins interim general manager for a short time in 2006, but during his tenure, he helped to build a big part of their foundation today.

Following the 2005-06 NHL season, the Boston Bruins fired general manager Mike O’Connell, ending his six-year tenure in Boston. Assistant GM Jeff Gorton was named interim GM and was in charge of the Bruins 2006 NHL Entry Draft at General Motors Place in Vancouver in late June.

In an 11 day span, in mid-June, Gorton made four trades, mostly involving draft picks and prospects. Two of those four deals are still making a huge impact for the Bruins 14 years later.

Two Minor Deals

Gorton’s first trade happened a week before the draft when he dealt the Bruins seventh-round pick in the 2006 draft to the Toronto Maple Leafs. In exchange, the Bruins received the rights to right-wing Petr Tenkrat.

With their pick, Toronto chose Chris Frank 188th overall. Frank never played a game in the NHL. Tenkrat spent the 2006-07 season with the Bruins, scoring nine goals and he had five assists in 64 games. The following year, Tenkrat returned to his home country of Sweden to finish out his career between the Swedish Hockey League (SHL) and the Czech Professional Hockey League (CZE).

Gorton’s fourth move was his last move 11 days after the draft pick swap with the Maple Leafs when he traded defensemen Nick Boynton and a 2007 fourth-round pick to the Arizona Coyotes for Paul Mara. Mara played one season in Boston with three goals and 15 assists in 59 games in the 2006-07 season.

The middle two moves made by Gorton have had a long-lasting effect on the Bruins and their success in the last decade and a half.

Boston Bruins, Tuukka Rask #40 (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images) /

The Bruins and Maple Leafs swap goalies on draft day.

The first move by Gorton on draft day in 2006, he traded goalie Andrew Raycroft to the Maple Leafs for the rights to a young prospect goalie named Tuukka Rask.

Raycroft spent five of his 11 professional years in Boston. He went 43-46-12 with the Bruins, with his best season coming in during the 2003-04 season. That season, he went 29-18-9 with all three of his shutouts with the Black and Gold. He finished the regular season with a 2.05 goals-against average (GAA) and a .926 save percentage (SV%).

Things did not well for Raycroft and the Bruins in the playoffs. After finishing as Northeast Division champs, they played their long-time rival Montreal Canadiens in the Eastern Conference Quarterfinals, where the Bruins blew a 3-1 series lead, including losing Game 7 at home 2-0 after being shutout by Jose Theodore.

Rask broke onto the scene for the Bruins in 2010, but after Tim Thomas backboned a playoff run in 2011 to the Stanley Cup and one more solid year in Boston with 35 wins in 2011-12, Rask took over the reins from the veteran netminder.

Rask has won 291 games with the Bruins and has led them back to the Stanley Cup Final two other times when they came up short against the Chicago Blackhawks in 2013 and the St. Louis Blues in 2019.

He won the Vezina Trophy in 2013 and finished second this past season. He won 30 or more games for five consecutive seasons from 2013-14 through 2017-18. He won 27 games two seasons ago and 26 this season. He has a 2.26 GAA and a .922 SV% in his career.

The 33-year old Rask will begin the 2020-21 season on the final year of an eight-year, $56 million deal. He left the Toronto playoff bubble over the summer to go home for a family emergency, but the Bruins expect him back for the upcoming season.

He has done just about everything a goalie can do in the NHL except winning that elusive championship. That’s the only thing missing from his resume, but without that trade by Gorton, who knows what the Bruins’ goaltending would have looked like the last decade.

TAMPA, FLORIDA – DECEMBER 12: Brad Marchand #63 of the Boston Bruins reacts to a play during a game against the Tampa Bay Lightning at Amalie Arena on December 12, 2019 in Tampa, Florida. (Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images) /

An exchange of draft picks landed a key piece to the Bruins offense.

Gorton’s second move on draft day was with the New York Islanders. He traded the Bruins fourth and fifth-round picks in the 2006 draft for the Islanders’ third-round pick at No. 71. There, Gorton selected left wing Brad Marchand out of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.

What a selection this has turned out to be. One of the game’s biggest agitators, Marchand has turned into one of the game’s most consistent point producers. He has settled in with Patrice Bergeron and David Pastrnak to form one of the most, if not the most, dangerous and scoring first lines in the NHL.

Marchand does it all for the Bruins. He is one of the best players in each zone 5-on-5, he is on the top power play unit and he kills penalties. Even playing all three facets of the games, he still tied a career-high with a plus-25 last season in 70 games.

In 751 career games for the Bruins, he has 290 goals (56 game-winning tallies) and 356 assists. He has 52 career power play goals and 82 assists, while scoring 27 shorthanded goals. Last season before the season paused because of the coronavirus pandemic, he had 28 goals and 59 assists in all 70 games.

In the Toronto playoff bubble, he was by far and away Boston’s best player with seven goals and five assists in 13 games.

In the Bruins run to a Stanly Cup in 2011, he had 11 goals and eight assists with a plus-12 as a 22-year old in 23 postseason games. His best postseason was in 2019 when he had nine goals and 14 assists in 23 games as the Bruins lost Game 7 of the Final at home to the Blues.

He has become one of the Bruins’ top play-makers over the last couple of seasons. In 2017-18, he had 51 assists before he set a career-high 64 the following year. This season, he was on pace to set another career-high if the season was not paused.

Next. Bruins: Analyzing and grading the Riley Duran pick. dark

The Bruins hired Peter Chiarelli as GM in July of 2006 and Gorton went back to assistant GM. He would be fired a year later before being hired by the New York Rangers as a Pro Scout. In July of 2015, the Rangers hired him as their GM, but it was two moves that he made in 2006 at the NHL Entry Draft that helped to build a foundation that the Bruins are still seeing the benefits of today.

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