The Boston Bruins have announced they have signed left wing Jake DeBrusk to a two-year deal.
We finally have some news on Boston Bruins‘ restricted free agent (RFA) left wing Jake DeBrusk!
This evening, Nov. 23, the B’s announced they have officially signed DeBrusk to a two-year bridge deal. This extension comes with an annual cap hit of $3.675 million.
With this transaction, Boston is now left with just $2,982,686 in cap space. I think some of this will be used to re-sign captain Zdeno Chara once there is a clear decision on when and how the 2020-21 season will be played.
This news gives clarity to the DeBrusk situation as many were unsure if Boston was going to give DeBrusk a deal or trade his rights and sign unrestricted free agent (UFA) winger Mike Hoffman instead.
However, this bridge deal shows that the B’s want DeBrusk to be a part of the team’s future plans and hope he can get back to his 2018-19 form where he notched 42 points (27 goals, 15 assists).
After such a successful sophomore campaign, many fans expected DeBrusk to take another step forward and score 30 goals and 50 points in 2019-20.
However, this just didn’t happen.
DeBrusk went backward in his progress, registering just 35 points (19 goals, 16 assists) in 65 games. This output was worse than his rookie season when he recorded 43 points (16 goals, 27 assists) in 70 games.
There’s no doubt that if DeBrusk was able to take the step forward that was expected of him in 2019-20 he would’ve received a much longer deal with a significantly higher cap hit.
However, due to his lackluster and inconsistent 2019-20 season, DeBrusk is now left with a bridge deal with a cap hit of just over $3.5 million.
DeBrusk did seem to bring his game to a higher level in the playoffs, however, scoring four goals in 13 games. This could be due to Ondrej Kase finally finding chemistry and his game on that line’s right wing.
If the line of DeBrusk, David Krejci, and
Kase can continue their impressive play from the postseason, DeBrusk should put up the numbers he did in 2018-19.
Many have written off DeBrusk already. But at just 24 years old, he is still very young and can easily prove to be the top-six forward he was seen after 2018-19.
In my opinion, after this bridge deal has expired after the 2021-22 season, we’ll be seeing DeBrusk getting an extension for at least six years with an at least $6 million per year cap hit.