a couple things to remember:
- around the time they got bourque, pierre lacroix used to brag about having never signed a UFA that wasn't one of his own guys. so it's not likely they would have gotten a big name UFA defenseman in the summer of 2000 if bourque is still a bruin.
- this was lacroix's "big spender" era and he liked to make a splash at the trade deadline, getting fleury, bourque, and blake in consecutive years. usually, this wasn't because he had a hole to fill, but because the prospect of picking up an impending superstar UFA on the cheap was too good to pass up. plus, lacroix couldn't take the chance that a game-changing player would land in detroit, st. louis, or dallas-- "let detroit have their tomas sandstroms and dmitri mironovs, but they're not going home with theo fleury and rob blake." so i'm not sure you could say he would have been actively seeking a svehla or numminen if bourque hadn't been on the market.
- also, remember that ozolinsh was still on the team when they got bourque. basically, they went through the '99-'00 regular season with the same d-corps as the '00-'01 regular season (foote, klemm, miller, de vries, and skoula), only with bourque instead of ozolinsh. so again, i don't think lacroix is spending his spring on the phones desperately trying to land a defenseman to shore up his team if there's no bourque.
- if they never get bourque, they never trade ozolinsh to carolina for a grab bag of picks. keep in mind that the ozolinsh deal happened because 1. bourque made him expendable, and 2. the bourque deal made it urgently necessary to replenish the prospect pool, which was already weakened from the fleury deal.
- it wasn't until bourque retired that lacroix actively tried to pick up a defenseman. they had to give up aaron miller to get blake, and bourque retiring left them one d-man short. that summer, lacroix signed todd gill, who if i recall correctly was his first ever UFA signing. after gill flamed out and was released, they picked up kasparaitis at the deadline. this was the first time in the big spender era where lacroix wasn't saying to himself, "there's a superstar on the market and i'm sure as hell not going to let detroit or dallas get him," but getting a guy at the deadline to fill a need.
so the question might more accurately be, if bourque retires a bruin, do the avs still win the cup in '01 with ozolinsh and blake? and one other variable would be, is st. patrick as hungry that spring if he's not carpooling to the rink with bourque wearing that goofy 16W hat?