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The Boston Bruins are in a rough spot.
They have about $10 million, if they’re lucky, to re-sign restricted free agent forwards Ryan Spooner and Brett Connolly (and unrestricted free agent forward Carl Soderberg, though that seems totally unlikely at this point). Those two won’t necessarily break the bank, but it’s the club’s restricted free agent defenseman, Dougie Hamilton, that could prove to break Boston’s bank and then some. Oh, and they also need to sign a backup goaltender, too.
And then there’s the report from TSN’s Darren Dreger that indicated that Hamilton, represented by CAA Sports, will seek a deal that pays him like the Los Angeles Kings d-man and Sochi 2014 superstar Drew Doughty or St. Louis’ Alex Pietrangelo ($6-7 million per season).
For a quick frame of reference, Pietrangelo’s second contract the Blues was a seven-year deal with a $6.5 million average annual value. Doughty’s contract was an eight-year deal with a $7 million cap-hit. Chara is currently the highest paid Bruin defender, too, with a $6.197 million cap-hit.
At first glance, yikes. That’d be a tough pill for general manager Don Sweeney to swallow.
It’s clear that the 21-year-old is on track to be one of those players -- both in terms of his level of play and pay that will follow -- but is he there already? That’s the question the Black and Gold will wrestle with, too. When it comes to how they view Hamilton, there’s no secret that he’s the heir apparent to Zdeno Chara as the face of the Boston point. There will be a point where the two blue-liners intersect in terms of their careers, where Hamilton emerges as the superior defenseman, and that’s how the Bruins want it. A natural changing of the guard, if you will. But I don’t think they’re set to commit to that in terms of Hamilton’s pay in a turbulent summer in which they’re short on cash.
Hamilton’s payday with Boston will come, sure, but I just don’t think they want it to be now. For the Bruins, this would basically be the worst summer ever for that. (Well, maybe last year would have been worse for the B’s given the bonus overages and what have you, but yeah, you get it.)
This, at least to me, screams negotiation tactic from the point of view of the Hamilton camp.
They know that the Bruins are in a rough spot right now, and they understand that Hamilton’s viewed as an undeniable part of their core moving forward. They’d be dumb not to let this sorta thing slip.
But if the Bruins had to choose between paying Hamilton between $6-7 million for the next six years or $2.75 to 3.5 million for the next two years as part of a bridge deal, you have to wonder which works more towards the B’s favor. If Hamilton, who had 10 goals and 42 points in 72 games played this season, continues to progress at this pace, you could be looking at a P.K. Subban-esque mega-deal two years from now. So, maybe $6 million over the next six is better than $3 million for the next two and then $9 million per for the eight years that come after that. It’s not that simple, though.
If there’s one team that’s felt the burn (if you wanna call it that) of overextending ‘their guys’, whether in dollars of years, it’s the Bruins. And that’s something that Sweeney, the assistant general manager through much of the club’s recent ‘overpayments’, can no longer hide from, either.
Hold on to your butts.
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