Bozak at 1 mil cheaper and younger is > Backes, but lets say thats a wash.

So you want Tarasenko for Vaakainen, Frederic and a 1st...

Forget the trade, which is off significantly in value....the NHL has a salary cap

Bozak for Backes, I could understand.(for the Bruins) But that seems an underwhelming return for Taresenko. Gee, the Leafs have to trade twice as much for 1.5 years of Pietrangelo.

The roster is cap compliant, though it did require Chara to sign a bonus laden contract like Iginla and Recchi did. I put him down at $1m as a base but expect they’d give him $2-3m in easily attainable bonuses.

Yes, that part of the deal was intended to be a wash. Bozak has a lower cap hit but Backes is actually owed less dollars. Bozak fills a need for Boston and I thought Backes could help with the leadership in STL.




Yes, this is what the deal boils down to, it’s essentially three 1st round picks for Tarasenko. I based it off of recent, comparable trades (like Kessel for two 1sts and a 2nd). Both of those prospects are first round picks and developing well, the Bruins see them as top of the roster guys. They had outstanding camps and are NHL ready.

Yeah that's going to be a no from St. Louis. They'll want a quality young nhl player back for Tarasenko. I'd imagine they'd ask for Debrusk

well, yes and no. This version is cap complaint, but I'm kind of assuming that this trade was made in the 2018-2019 season. Maybe that was dumb of me. If that is the case, the Bruins are sure to run into a cap overage of around 2 million, which would take 2 million off the cap for this year. Then you have to look at the contracts. 2.5 million for carlo is doubtful, I would tend to think that it would be 3-3.5 on a 2 or 3 year bridge, and more in line with what Chychrun got if they go beyond that. McAvoy isn't taking that kind of term for less than what ekblad got in my opinion, so there goes your cap room even if there isnt' an overage.

Then if Chara is taking an incentive based deal in this contract, you would have to think that would mean the incentives are at least 4 million, and are all extremely attainable, so then there's a 4 million overage even if debrusk or studnicka or whichever ELC contract makes the roster doesn't hit their bonuses. That's going to make it tough to re-sign Debrusk, Grizz, and Krug. It just doesn't seem to work.

If they wait until the deadline the Bruins would have more than enough cap space to make that deal this year. They take on $6.5m in AAV and according to this site they could add almost $13m at the deadline. They can’t do it today but in a few weeks they’ll have enough space banked to take on those pro rated salaries.

I researched the extensions too.

For McAvoy I looked at Hanifin and Reilly who both signed for $5, Seth Jones at $5.5. Ekblad was an outlier at 7.5 so I split the difference at $6.5.

For Carlo I looked at Ryan Murray, Dumba, Trouba and Zadorov who all signed for $2.1-3m on short term deals.

Chara is a fair point, but he’s missed significant time this year. He took a pay cut last year and I expect that to continue as his role gets more and more reduced. Even then, we’re talking about those bonuses putting them over by $2-3m, that’s not a hard number to clear. Maybe they buy out Bozak’s last year or trade Kevan Miller. Plus, those issues (signing DeBrusk and Krug) are two playoffs from now, Bergeron will be 35 and Krejci 34, at that point they may want to make a change to some core pieces and transition in some more youth.

Chara actually got a raise, and a big one at that

It isn’t you are a player short which puts you over. Not to mention you are light in some of the signings.

Blues have a solid prospect pool they need impact players NOW not so much prospects, they want Quality over Quantity at this point.