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The Boston Bruins took care of two of their biggest offseason question marks today, signing pending restricted free agents Torey Krug and Reilly Smith to extensions. Krug’s extension is a one-year deal that keeps him in Boston for 2015-16 at $3.4 million, while Smith’s is a two-year pact with a $3.425 million cap-hit. Both will remain restricted free agents when their new deals expire.
The deals had reportedly been in the works for the Black and Gold for some time now, with the teams resuming their talks with both Krug and Smith as soon as they could (Jan. 1 was the first official day that players on one-year deals could sign extensions). The new contracts commit another $6.825 million in total towards an already tight Boston cap picture, and leaves B’s defenseman Dougie Hamilton, another restricted free agent, as the club’s major re-signing priority. (Other restricted free agents include Brett Connolly, Ryan Spooner, and Niklas Svedberg).
At first glance, these contracts are rather hard to love given the B’s situation.
Excluding Marc Savard’s $4.007 million figure that’ll hit the long-term injured reserve the day the regular season begins, the Bruins now have $61.625 million committed to 10 forwards, four defensemen, and one goaltender. Now, that’s not an awful figure, especially when you realize that the Bruins will undoubtedly give a defensive spot (or maybe two) to one of their affordable depth options in Providence, but one that definitely forces the Bruins to be a bit more tighter than they’d like, as they’ll have to carry Savard’s money through the summer and training camp. So, it’s closer to $65.6 million in terms of what’s on their books when they can actually spend that money this summer. That, with a cap projected to be anywhere from $70 to 73 million, is not an overly pleasant figure.
For one, it certainly means that Carl Soderberg (26 goals and 85 points in 142 NHL games) is a goner barring the club moving out an expensive piece of their core to free up some extra change for a center that could command $5 million on an open market short on skillful centermen.
And that’s just the biggest problem from a team scope.
With this deal, the 23-year-old Krug becomes the Bruins’ third-highest paid defenseman behind Zdeno Chara and Dennis Seidenberg. Hamilton, the aforementioned restricted free agent by the time the light goes out on this season, whom the B’s have not sat down with yet, will certainly eclipse that. The $3.4 million figure is certainly that of a defenseman that’s posted a 40-point season (and is likely on the way to another one, or within two points of it at the very least), though it comes with a challenge for the undersized undrafted defender. He’s yet to prove his worth as a legitimate top-four option for the Black and Gold. Thats’ the next step, and one that Krug is challenging himself to with this one-year payday.
But even at $3.4 million, Krug’s more than a third-pairing defenseman for the Bruins. He’s their smartest puck-mover on the backend, the leader of their power play movement (though its lacked some punch this season), and with 25 goals and 73 points in 141 NHL games (including six goals and 16 points in 27 playoff games), has without question proved that he’s more than a one-year fluke.
On Smith, it’s a two-year deal that comes with a cap-hit that many have questioned.
Given the fact that it took Smith nearly 55 games to get going this season, with stops on every line along the way, a cap-hit of $3.425, one that makes him pricier than last year’s comparable, Tyler Johnson (who counts for $3.33 million against Tampa’s cap for this year and two more), is tough to swallow. A year ago, this would have been a go-to contract for Smith and the Bruins. But Johnson has taken flight on his deal, while Smith has sputtered a bit more than he’d like to admit on his current one-year, $1.4 million contract. To be blunt about it, Johnson’s eighth in the league in points (63), while Smith’s two-assist night two games ago put him at 35 points for the season. Johnson’s done more.
Now, there are obvious talent and system differences when it comes to the Bolts and Bruins, but given how close they two were across the board a year ago, one has taken off and become a bargain while Smith runs the chance of becoming an albatross on Boston’s books. This is not to harp on Reilly Smith the hockey player, who I think is a more than serviceable player on a team’s third or even second line, but a raise of this magnitude in a down-year is undeniably troublesome given Boston’s cap predicament.
Especially when Chiarelli pitched Connolly, the Bruins’ big deadline get and another restricted free agent, as a player with a top-six future in Boston. So, if Connolly has a top-six future and David Pastrnak has top-line potential, would that make Smith a $3.45 million bottom-sixer?
Chiarelli dubbed the deals ‘‘what the players would have received in arbitration’, which can’t help but seem like an over exaggeration. Krug? Maybe. Smith? I honestly doubt it. This is the same Reilly Smith who's had a stretch that included just three goals in 29 games at one point this season, and had 10 goals and 27 points in 55 games just two and a half weeks ago. He’s gone through three different stretches of nine or more games without a goal this season, and has 18 goals and 55 points in his last 105 games played -- almost all of which coming on the always dangerous second-line with Brad Marchand and Patrice Bergeron -- after recording 14 goals and 31 points in his first 40 games as a Bruin. If he’s the latter, this could be a great deal for the Bruins. But if he’s closer to the former, which over a 105-game sample seems to be closer to the reality of what he is, then this is going to be one questionable deal.
While Chiarelli praised these deals as market value and the ‘flexibility’ the term gives both the Bruins and the players, this can’t help but feel like another case of the Boston front office rewarding players for their willingness to take bridge deals, regardless of performance during said bridge deal.
And yet, people wonder how this team got here in the first place.
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