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A year ago yesterday, the Boston Bruins made a potentially franchise changing deal. Well, a definite franchise changing deal. It was the famed trade sent
Tyler Seguin and forward
Rich Peverley to the Dallas Stars for forwards
Loui Eriksson,
Reilly Smith,
Matt Fraser, and former first-round pick
Joe Morrow, of course.
Crazy to think that it’s been a year and a day now. Time flies when you’re having fun.
Or trading players with ceilings greater than most of those in your entire organization, anyways.
Everybody remembers how straight-up lucky the Bruins were to land Seguin with the second overall pick in the 2010 NHL Draft. See, the Bruins bypassed the whole complete rebuild to land a top pick thing. It was by blind and utter luck that
Phil Kessel -- the key return to Toronto in exchange for first round picks in 2010 and 2011 (along with a second in 2010) -- and the 2009-10 Toronto Maple Leafs stumbled and fumbled their way through the year. Everybody knew it. Even the Bruins.
They felt that the 2010 pick from the Leafs would be a top-15 pick, sure, but a top-2 pick? A steal.
In just three years with the B’s, Seguin recorded 56 goals and 121 points in 203 games. His 29 goals and 67 points in 2011-12 were tops among Black-and-Gold skaters, and paved the way to a six-year contract extension worth a total of $34 million. If Seguin panned out to be the player the Bruins thought they had on their top six, that contract would turned out to be yet another steal for the B’s.
But when the league locked out for half a year, it became apparent that the youngster had his ‘quirks’.
First came a Swiss newspaper report that Seguin was a slob and trashed his lockout apartment. Then, when hockey returned back to the Hub, Seguin’s game didn’t take off like most thought it would, and his solid 16-16-32 line in 48 games played was dubbed underwhelming. Those numbers paled in comparison to Seguin’s miserable one-goal, eight-point postseason showing in 22 games.
Frustration grew, and Seguin became the obvious scapegoat. “How could the Bruins pay somebody that no-showed for four playoff rounds nearly six million per year? Why wasn’t he a seasoned pro both on and off at the ice at 21 years old like
Patrice Bergeron was?” The frustration of a fanbase burned by the Chicago Blackhawks’ speed and skill in six games was palpable.
Their frustrations weren’t quieted by the B’s front office, either.
“He’s gotta commit his mind, and focus on the one task at hand. He’s gotta become more of a professional,” Chiarelli said at the 2013 NHL Draft when asked about what needed to change with Seguin. “He’s gotta commit to being a professional and focusing on the game. It’s as simple as that.”
It was a public callout against the third-year pro. It straight-up embarrassed Seguin, too, I think. And it even became a bit more uncomfortable when the Bruins
couldn’t find a suitor for No. 19 that weekend, and made everyone wonder just what the heck the B’s were going to do to rectify this increasingly ugly situation. Could Seguin honestly return back to Boston given the way he was being dragged through the mud by both the press and his general manager? Right or wrong, heat of the moment or not, it seemed like Seguin was running out of allies in the Hub by the minute.
Then, on the Fourth of July, with everyone in Boston ready to put a Cup loss behind them, Chiarelli struck. In the blink of an eye, Seguin was the star piece of a seven-player deal with the Dallas Stars.
And here we are, a year later, asking-- Was this one gigantic mistake that the club regrets?
By now, everybody’s stated their opinion on the matter.
Most feel like the B’s did in their analysis of Seguin; he’s good but they can’t sit around and ‘babysit’ him while they try to win another Cup or two during
Zdeno Chara’s window as an elite NHL defenseman. Others feel that the Bruins were bailing on a kid with a high-end skill-set
way too early into his career. Then there was the other, slightly more reasonable contingent of fans that thought that Seguin, though a player with undeniable star talent, had issues that could’ve made that contract untradeable had he continued to slide into that semi-alarming state of on-ice apathy.
But man is it hard to label this trade anything but a mistake given the current state of the B’s.
In the now, not only are the B’s broke by way of
Jarome Iginla bonuses, but they’re thin on the right side and dying for a powerful right-handed shot to add to the roster to help out their top line talents. Oh, and with his $1.8 million base salary and $3.7 million in bonuses, one year of Iginla cost you $5.5 million. Or, $250,000 less than having Seguin in that spot would’ve cost you.
Worth it? Probably not. No, strike that -- definitely not.
(Oh, man. This is all like free candy for the ‘Seguin should’ve stayed a Bruin’ crowd, you know.)
The Bruins obviously nabbed two nice complementary players in Eriksson and Smith, but they’re not the top-tier talent that Seguin is, nor will they ever be. And while we understand that the Bruins are a club based on their ‘team concept’ and not the ‘one superstar sniper’, you have to wonder how and why the latter will never work for a club that’s seemingly always in search of more skill.
And because it’s fun to drive knives into skin, let’s say that the Bruins didn’t move Seguin last summer and moved just Peverley for salary cap relief. If they did that, they’d currently have $7.947 million in space to fill three winger spots and re-sign
Torey Krug. If they had kept both Seguin and Peverley (and assuming Peverley never had a cardiac episode, an absolute unknown to everybody), the Bruins still have $4.697 to fill two winger spots and re-sign Krug. (This is all too painful to read.)
You’ll be told that Seguin’s developmental track needed to be as a centerman, though. Sure, that’s a fine point. But we can’t pretend that he wasn’t one of this team’s best wingers -- if not the best -- for two years. It wasn’t a perfect fit, but it was a fit nevertheless, and in the short term (thinking in terms of Chara’s aforementioned window as the game’s top defender), it was a more than adequate scenario for all parties involved. (His speed would’ve been nice against Montreal, wouldn’t you say?)
The obvious counter to this idea is that Seguin wouldn’t have panned out in Boston given the friends he kept in this city and the lifestyle he had as a 21-year-old with more money than most his age. But that stuff can change. You’ve seen that firsthand with
Patrick Kane in Chicago. So, yeah, Seguin was a bit of a slob, liked his alcohol, and wore the same clothes as the day before. But it’s not like he was out in the streets of Boston committing himself to his best Aaron Hernandez impression.
But the B’s threw him under the bus with no problem, and really set themselves up for his exit.
An exit they’re currently paying for as they look for
David Krejci’s newest right winger*.
(*Applicants must be willing to play for a million dollars and free Celtics tickets.)
So sure, let’s sit back and say that the Seguin trade is still ‘too early to determine who won’. That’s fair in the now, I suppose. But at a certain point, and with Seguin a legitimate star in Dallas while the Bruins are currently counting up their pennies with the hopes of wiggling Smith in at a bridge deal and praying that Eriksson can stay healthy and mesh with Krejci next year on the Bruins’ top line, I think Boston’s going to have to embrace the fact that this one’s a loss for the Black-and-Gold.
And that’s just one year into it.
Ty Anderson has been covering the Boston Bruins for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010, is a member of the Pro Hockey Writers Association's Boston Chapter, and can be contacted on Twitter, or emailed at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com
Boston Bruins Blogger •Bruins Feature Columnist • 
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