The Boston Bruins find themselves in a bit of a weird spot and things are probably getting uncomfortable in Don Sweeney’s office right now with a lot to unpack from the past season and going forward in the future.
Adding some more scoring to the Bruins roster would never be a bad thing to help guys like Taylor Hall and David Pastrnak on the team, this would be a compliment to those guys.
At the Trade Deadline, it had been rumored out there that the Bruins may have poked around and looked at potentially adding Conor Garland from the Canucks to their team, there are a few things that stand in the way of that but it could be something that Boston looks at doing again and it wouldn’t be a bad thing.
What would it take to add Garland?
The most important question here obviously is how could the Bruins land Garland? Well, value aside the first hurdle to have to cross would be the salary cap and in a trade sense, Boston would have to try and send a contract like Derek Forbort’s $3 Million back in order to make some more room for Garland and to have wiggle room left over because well, why wouldn’t you. Value-wise in a trade, it might get difficult as the Bruins don’t have a 2nd round pick until 2025 and Sweeney would be nuts to toss a 1st in 2023 to the Canucks.
Instead of being hasty with trading draft capital, maybe a combination of Forbort with a prospect like Marc McLaughlin or Georgi Merkulov could get it done, if Sweeney absolutely needs to toss a pick into the deal I would go no lower than a 4th rounder.
Does it make sense to add Garland?
All in all, yes anything could make sense for the Bruins right now. Plain and simple. One thing however that the Bruins will need to get done before anything else is trying to figure out how they are keeping franchise star David Pastrnak in Boston beyond this season. Adding Conor Garland would most certainly take a back seat to this but overall I think Bruins fans would love to see Pasta staying in Boston instead of getting Conor Garland in the long-term look of things.