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One day later, and it appears that the Boston Bruins remain in hot pursuit of St. Louis Blues defenseman and possible top-pair solution,
Kevin Shattenkirk. But as much as the Black and Gold would like to send nothing for something, that’s not how it’ll work for a deal to come to fruition.
Shattenkirk, although signed for just one more season at $4.25 million, has immense value in this trade market. There’s also an added value on any right-handed defenseman, and Shattenkirk is in the mold of what the next big thing in the National Hockey League seems to be, which is a mobile, strong skating defenseman capable of a strong first pass out of the defensive zone to push pace the other way. And there’s no shortage of teams looking to upgrade their defensive group along with the Bruins, as teams like the Edmonton Oilers, Detroit Red Wings, New York Rangers, and Tampa Bay Lightning -- among several others, too -- are seeing what it’ll take to make a significant move. The Oilers, for what it’s worth, have reportedly expressed significant interest in acquiring the 27-year-old Shattenkirk, too.
The obvious bad news for B’s general manager
Don Sweeney is that the Oilers, at first glance anyways (and even after a second look probably), have more viable trade assets than the Bruins.
Shattenkirk is not a player the Bruins will be able to trade spare parts for, nor is it a team that will get conned into taking on a bad contract to simply dump the player. The Blues are still a Cup contender, and one last run with Shattenkirk would always trump the idea of absorbing an Adam McQuaid or Dennis Seidenberg and other pieces just to make Boston better, nor would it make sense to even entertaining such a package given what some of the aforementioned teams could and would offer instead.
In essence, to get something great, the Bruins will have to give up something great.
That’s a relative term, as well. It doesn’t necessarily mean the Bruins will have to ship out a top-six forward or top-pairing defender (they have one, and it’s the 39-year-old
Zdeno Chara) to intrigue the Blues into a deal. Great means that it has to make fiscal sense for St. Louis, too.
With a little over $12 million of projected cap space to their name, and with pending unrestricted free agent
David Backes maybe still in their plans along with restricted free agent
Jaden Schwartz in need of a new deal (along with countless other roleplayers), the Blues could be in need of an affordable contract that they could plug into their forward mix moving forward. And if it’s defense the Blues have (St. Louis would have seven capable defensemen on their NHL roster even after a Shattenkirk trade), the discussion shifts to a
Ryan Spooner or
Frank Vatrano.
Spooner, under contract for one more year at an affordable $950,000 and a restricted free agent at the end of that deal, put up an impressive 13 goals and 49 points (17 of those points came on the power play) in 80 games for the Bruins this past season. He’s the third-line center behind the club’s one-two center-punch of
Patrice Bergeron and
David Krejci, and will likely always be that guy so long as they’re healthy and in town. A Spooner trade would be Sweeney dealing from what’s perhaps the organization’s lone position of strength (even with Alex Khokhlachev gone), and would make sense if the organization believes that
Austin Czarnik could jump into that role without much of a dropoff in production after Czarnik put up 20 goals and 61 points in 68 AHL games this past season.
But such a risk not only puts the pressure on a player like Czarnik (or maybe
Danton Heinen, though he mainly played on the wing for Denver in the NCAA a year ago) to perform right out of the gate, but also gives the Bruins no experienced backup option if Krejci, who has missed 45 games due to injury over the last two seasons and underwent hip surgery yet again this offseason, gets injured.
Then there’s Vatrano, under contract for another two seasons for less than $800,000, who turned heads with an absurd first pro season and strong showing at every level, be it the American Hockey League, NHL, or even during his time with Team USA at the Worlds. The Bruins, especially with
Loui Eriksson maybe leaving as a free agent in just a couple of weeks, are already thin on skillful wingers, and a Vatrano trade coupled with an Eriksson exit would leave Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak as the team’s only consistently legitimate scoring threats on the wing. That’s not enough.
It wouldn’t even end there, as they would likely have to part with one of their two first-round picks, be it the 14th overall pick (their own pick) or the 29th overall pick obtained from San Jose last June. The Bruins would prefer not to move that 14th pick, too, as that’s a pick where they could likely nab a player like
Charlie McAvoy or
Dante Fabbro, two players that could undoubtedly bump up the overall outlook of the B’s defense of tomorrow, versus a 29th pick that seems more like a wild card.
All of that seems like the mere starting point for a player under contract for just one more season.
Ty Anderson has been covering the National Hockey League for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010, has been a member of the Pro Hockey Writers Association's Boston Chapter since 2013, and can be contacted on Twitter, or emailed at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com.
Boston Bruins Blogger •Bruins Feature Columnist • 
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