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What’s done is done and for better or worse (and most of the Hub leans heavily towards the latter in that regard), Dougie Hamilton is no longer a member of the Boston Bruins.
Traded to the Calgary Flames for three draft picks before last weekend’s draft -- the Bruins nabbed Zachary Senyshyn (15th overall), Jakob Forsbacka-Karlsson (45th overall), and Jeremy Lauzon (52nd overall) with those picks -- Hamilton’s trade has left fans in Boston with dozens of questions. Most of which will never be answered. But the overwhelming one: Why?
Why would the Bruins, who by all means admitted to giving up on Tyler Seguin entirely too early into his NHL career and not getting a strong enough return to justify the trade, bail on Hamilton?
...And here come the leaks.
From Sunday’s Boston Herald:
“It was surprising,… said one NHL assistant GM. “It’s obvious there’s something going on that we don’t know about. From what I’ve heard behind the scenes, his teammates don’t like him. I heard he’s a loner and sort of an uppity kid, and that his teammates don’t like him and it was unanimous.…
Simply put, I don’t agree with this. In three years of interactions with Hamilton, I never got this impression. He was a nervous, timid kid, it looked. But uppity? I don’t know. That seems like a stretch to me. He was definitely more Phil Kessel than he was Tyler Seguin. Meaning he did prefer to be out of the limelight while Seguin seemed to genuinely enjoy the cameras and his interactions with the media. Like Kessel, Hamilton seemed awkward at times. Or extraordinarily uncomfortable. But that was in a stall with cameras and microphones surrounding his face. And in a locker room full of veterans, most of whom had won a Stanley Cup, that knew all the right things to say for any and every question thrown their way after a game, win or lose, too. For the record, I’d probably be a bit uncomfortable, too.
And his teammates didn’t like him? Again, I never got this vibe. Now listen, maybe I’m a bit out of the loop seeing as I don’t travel with the team or cover all 82 games live in person, but Hamilton wasn’t a recluse when it came to his public life. You often saw him out with teammates. It never looked like he shunned them for better company. (But you’ll have to take this from a Boston-based perspective.)
And even if he’s a loner, is that truly the worst thing? So, Seguin was a partier and Hamilton was a loner. Both are deemed unacceptable? Just create robots that play hockey, eat dinners with the team, and go to bed at 9 p.m. if this is that big of a concern. Because you’ll just never be satisfied, really. If you meet anybody in life and spend more than a day with them, you’ll probably find something you don’t like about them. (Don’t take that as a challenge, I don’t wanna be responsible for any breakups.)
I mean, Tim Thomas wasn’t the most jovial character in the B’s room and that seemed to work fine for a long, long time, right? Marc Savard was another guy that had ‘issues’ with teammates and coaches, although those issues seemed to subside when he came to Boston.
To say that this was ‘unanimous’ seems a bit hyperbolic.
Loner or not, Hamilton was really good at what he did on the ice. And the Bruins sold low on his exit (both in terms of the return and the teams they explored trades with for Hamilton [it’s been reported that most of the league was unaware of his availability on the market and that’s just… that’s just unacceptable]). I think that deep down, that’ll always be the most agonizing part to handle for a Bruins fanbase that’s already living the day-in, day-out nightmare of watching Seguin flourish to the tune of 74 goals and 161 points in just 151 games for the Dallas Stars since his trade out of Boston.
But being a ‘loner’ or ‘uppity’ just can’t be the only reason why Hamilton is no longer in black and gold. It just can’t be. That’d be more embarrassing than the early verdict on the return, to be honest.
Financially speaking, the sides had to be off.
Sure enough...
From Sportsnet :
The best information I can give you is it appears the team offered six years and $33M to Hamilton, while the response was about $2M per year higher.
OK, so the Bruins came at the 22-year-old with a six-year deal worth $33 million. That’d give Hamilton a $5.5 million cap-hit and keep him under contract with the B’s until he’s 28 years old. It’s not an awful contract offer from the B’s point of view, and seems like a good starting point for a compromise. The counter offer from Hamilton’s camp, of course, asked for another $2 million per season, according to Friedman. That’d make it a six-year, $45 million contract with a $7.5 million cap-hit. That’d be a bit rough for a B’s club that was scrapping the bottom of their cars for change this past season. In their search for change under the carseat, Simon Gagne was the Canadian quarter that keeps you from purchasing that candy bar in the office break room. Such a heavy contract would have made Hamilton the highest paid Bruin (even higher than David Krejci’s $7.25 million cap-hit, which goes into effect this upcoming season). And although he’d likely be good for it in six years, the Tyler Myers debacle in Buffalo makes teams weary of such heavy contracts in years, dollars, or both.
But everybody knows that you never come in low with your first offer if you’re a player. Or a general manager for that matter. Between the Bruins’ $5.5 million per year offer and Hamilton’s $7.5 million per year counteroffer, it’s easy to feel as if there was a middle ground to be met between the parties.
Say, oh I don’t know, $6.5 million per year over the next four years?
Frustratingly enough, the Bruins have added $6.3 million to their 2015-16 books since the Hamilton trade became official between the $2.75 million the Bruins are on the hook for in Milan Lucic salary retention (honestly, it still blows my mind that the Bruins, a team that once consistently thumped their chest to the league about what a unique player they had in No. 17) are paying almost three million dollars to have Lucic play in a different city), Adam McQuaid extension ($2.75 million per year for the next four seasons), and Zac Rinaldo trade ($850,000 through the 2016-17 season). And while the Hub’s bloodthirsty balcony will appreciate the tenacity and downright nasty snarl of both McQuaid and Rinaldo as NHL players, I think that $6.3 million would have undoubtedly been better off going towards keeping Hamilton in the fold for the long term future.
At the end of the day, it just doesn’t feel like the Bruins were game for playing hardball with Hamilton, which he, with his best interest in mind, ultimately went for. And he won’t be worse off for it as he goes to a Calgary club clearly on the upswing and loaded with the cash to make him a well paid man.
Yet, such a starting asking price does raise a question as to whether or not Hamilton did want to remain with the B’s organization. Sources closer to the situation have subtly hinted to HockeyBuzz.com that Hamilton wasn’t necessarily enamored with the Original Six franchise, and that his initial demands could have been a strategic ploy to get the B’s front office to accelerate the trade process.
(Of course, this sort of stuff always seems to come out after the player has been dealt. And though frustrating, it should be far from shocking to Bruins fans, as the gossip of this magnitude never leaks when that player is still under team control and ‘one of your own’, as they’d say.)
What’s true and what’s bogus, of course, will remain a mystery.
No more mysterious than Boston’s next move, with free agency looming on July 1st, of course.
Ty Anderson has been covering the Boston Bruins and 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 (@_TyAnderson), or emailed at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com