This is the hill Peter Chiarelli is destined to die on as the Bruins start to gear up for training camp.
It is true – you can’t sign everybody anymore. The NHL put a salary cap in place so Jeremy Jacobs would fucking sign someone teams couldn’t spend millions upon billions upon trillions of dollars to create NHL super teams. It was put to give NHL teams a sort of checks and balances that this league has never seen before. Since the Bruins won the cup in 2011, Peter Chiarelli has handed out horrible contracts like they were tic-tacs are a halitosis convention.
With the Boston Bruins being the kings of the NHL, Chiarelli quickly went to work to make sure that middle of the road third liners like Chris Kelly and Rich Peverley were over-compensated for coming through in the playoffs.
2011-212 offseason:
– Peverley signed a 3 year, $9.75M contract that included a no trade clause (limited to a certain number of teams).
– Kelly got a 4 year, $12M contract with a full NTC for 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 and a limited NTC in 2014-2015 and 2015-2016.
– David Krejci signed a 3 year, $15.75M extension with a modified no trade clause
– Gregory Campbell signed a 3 year, $4.8M contract
– Dan Paille signed a 3 year, $3.9M contract
– Johnny Boychuk signed a 3 year, $10.1M contract with a modified NTC
– Adam McQuaid signed a 3 year, $4.7M contract
2012-2013 offseason:
– Milan Lucic signed a 3 year, $18M contract with a modified NTC
– Brad Marchand signed a 4 year, $18M contract with a modified NTC
– Tyler Seguin signed a 6 year, $34.5M contract with a modified NTC
2013-2014:
– Dennis Seidenberg signed a 4 year, $16M contract with a NTC
– Patrice Bergeron signed an 8 year, $52M contract with an NTC
– Tuukka Rask signed an 8 year, $56M contract with an NTC
– Kevan Miller signed a 2 year, $1.6M contract
So this is the gist of Chiarelli’s most recent transactions. I’m pretty sure I have forgotten a few, but if you’re looking for it – there it is. The problem is that Peter Chiarelli has remained to loyal to his Stanley Cup winning team in 2011 and that’s where this whole clusterfuck of a cap mismanagement is being had. After the jettison of Tyler Seguin and Rich Peverley, Chiarelli brought back Loui Eriksson’s contract and a few pretty good ones (Fraser, Smith and Morrow).
Here’s the problem:
Peter Chiarelli has been so committed to his 2011 group that he is willing to depart with key players (Johnny Boychuk, potentially) because “he can’t sign everyone” and that is going to be the fight song throughout the season, especially if the Bruins come out to a slow start. With the NHL lockout, the Bruins had four chances to use two compliance buyouts on whatever contracts were weighing them down at the time and they chose not to – including this past off-season where they could have cut bait with Chris Kelly and Adam McQuaid (if they were deemed healthy) or told Greg Campbell to pound sand.
Instead Chiarelli sat on his hands and has been playing the waiting game while trying to con you into believing that he can’t sign everyone because they just don’t have the cap space.
Hello Pete, you were the one who did this. You were the one who was so hellbent on trading Seguin/Peverley to try to re-sign Nathan Horton and when Horton was too enamored with the tiger at the zoo, offered buckets of money to Jarome Iginla and pushed his salary into this season. Peter, you basically paid the contract of Loui Eriksson or Brad Marchand is bonus money deferment this season.
So now we are left with a stinking corpse of 2011 and a group that’s “core” gets bigger every season. Can’t get rid of Milan Lucic he is a core player and we can’t get rid of David Krejci because he is also a core player and we can’t get rid of Dennis Seidenberg because he is a core player. This team has so many core players that the fringe players are soon going to be core players.
If you look at the Bruins current roster, you’ll notice that they are incredibly heavy down the middle with three above average centers Krejci, Bergeron and Soderberg and the rest of the “centers” are garbage (Kelly, Campbell). Please note that I had to quote centers because both players could very well be wing players this season thanks to Chiarelli not being able to correctly identify that his right wing depth has more holes in it than a 3 twated hooker.
When you look towards next year’s offseason, you’ll notice some pretty big names are slated for free agency. Johnny Boychuk (UFA), Carl Soderberg (UFA) and Dougie Hamilton (RFA) will all garner some attention on the open market. Don’t forget that unlike Torey Krug and Reilly Smith, Dougie Hamilton can be given an offer sheet by other teams and probably will if the Bruins decide to do the no-pants dance with a contract.
I get that good teams run into issues with cap management but it seems like the Bruins are willing to cut off their nose to spite their face because of their loyalty.
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