Bruins’ payroll is far from unrestricted - The Boston Globe
As the weekend approached, players and owners were in tentative agreement to serve up both resumption of play and labor peace, a summertime combo as refreshing as ice cubes and lemonade.
The coronavirus pandemic could turn things quickly bitter.
Whatever the eventual conclusion to the 2019-20 NHL season, the Bruins remain among a slew of teams looking to avoid a sour time on Oct. 9, the start of the new free agency period.
The proposed collective bargaining agreement calls for the salary-cap ceiling to remain at $81.5 million next season, and it would stay there until hockey-related revenue returns to pre-COVID-19 levels ($4.8 billion). It is possible the cap could stay at its current level for two to three seasons.
This means Torey Krug will not, barring some wizardry from reigning general manager of the year Don Sweeney, be maximizing his long-term earnings locally.
Krug and restricted free agents Jake DeBrusk, Matt Grzelcyk, and Anders Bjork are the most pressing contract situations for Sweeney. Here’s a refresher on Black-and-Gold concerns after this season:
Unrestricted free agents in 2021 include David Krejci, Tuukka Rask, Jaroslav Halak, Sean Kuraly, and Par Lindholm. Brandon Carlo, Ondrej Kase, Nick Ritchie, and Anton Blidh will be (arbitration-eligible) restricted free agents.
In the summer of 2022, Patrice Bergeron (UFA), 24-year-old Charlie McAvoy, and Jeremy Lauzon (both RFA) are up.
The big one for 2023 is David Pastrnak, who will be 27 and likely on his way to becoming the highest-paid player in Bruins history. Bergeron, though he carries a criminally low $6.875 million cap hit, earned a club-record $8.75 million in salary in each of the first four years of his current deal, which began in 2014-15.
McAvoy could pass that mark before Pastrnak.
Also:
Sad to hear reports this past week that Eddie Shack, 83, entered palliative care for cancer.
The rollicking right winger won four Cups in Toronto and inspired a song — “Clear the Track, Here Comes Shack” — that became an instant hit in the city during his breakout 26-goal season of 1965-66. He was also loathed by Bruins fans, until The Entertainer landed in Boston for two seasons (1967-69).
Milt Schmidt, the GM who handed the Leafs $100,000 and Murray Oliver for Shack in May ’67, believed the deal was one of the keys to turning around the moribund Bruins. “We had [Bobby] Orr by then, but even he wasn’t enough,” Schmidt, who died in 2017, told the Globe’s Kevin Paul Dupont in 1990. “We needed Shack to inject some laughs and humor. Remember, we’d had some dark days here in the ’60s. Shack worked hard, but he also made everyone laugh, and the togetherness just seemed to grow and grow.”
As the weekend approached, players and owners were in tentative agreement to serve up both resumption of play and labor peace, a summertime combo as refreshing as ice cubes and lemonade.
The coronavirus pandemic could turn things quickly bitter.
Whatever the eventual conclusion to the 2019-20 NHL season, the Bruins remain among a slew of teams looking to avoid a sour time on Oct. 9, the start of the new free agency period.
The proposed collective bargaining agreement calls for the salary-cap ceiling to remain at $81.5 million next season, and it would stay there until hockey-related revenue returns to pre-COVID-19 levels ($4.8 billion). It is possible the cap could stay at its current level for two to three seasons.
This means Torey Krug will not, barring some wizardry from reigning general manager of the year Don Sweeney, be maximizing his long-term earnings locally.
Krug and restricted free agents Jake DeBrusk, Matt Grzelcyk, and Anders Bjork are the most pressing contract situations for Sweeney. Here’s a refresher on Black-and-Gold concerns after this season:
Unrestricted free agents in 2021 include David Krejci, Tuukka Rask, Jaroslav Halak, Sean Kuraly, and Par Lindholm. Brandon Carlo, Ondrej Kase, Nick Ritchie, and Anton Blidh will be (arbitration-eligible) restricted free agents.
In the summer of 2022, Patrice Bergeron (UFA), 24-year-old Charlie McAvoy, and Jeremy Lauzon (both RFA) are up.
The big one for 2023 is David Pastrnak, who will be 27 and likely on his way to becoming the highest-paid player in Bruins history. Bergeron, though he carries a criminally low $6.875 million cap hit, earned a club-record $8.75 million in salary in each of the first four years of his current deal, which began in 2014-15.
McAvoy could pass that mark before Pastrnak.
Also:
Sad to hear reports this past week that Eddie Shack, 83, entered palliative care for cancer.
The rollicking right winger won four Cups in Toronto and inspired a song — “Clear the Track, Here Comes Shack” — that became an instant hit in the city during his breakout 26-goal season of 1965-66. He was also loathed by Bruins fans, until The Entertainer landed in Boston for two seasons (1967-69).
Milt Schmidt, the GM who handed the Leafs $100,000 and Murray Oliver for Shack in May ’67, believed the deal was one of the keys to turning around the moribund Bruins. “We had [Bobby] Orr by then, but even he wasn’t enough,” Schmidt, who died in 2017, told the Globe’s Kevin Paul Dupont in 1990. “We needed Shack to inject some laughs and humor. Remember, we’d had some dark days here in the ’60s. Shack worked hard, but he also made everyone laugh, and the togetherness just seemed to grow and grow.”
