Blake Wheeler as a Shark, Jarome Iginla with a championship ring, and 3 Bruins titles between 2010 and 2020...
During the 2010 season, Bruins star center Marc Savard suffered a grade-2 concussion, putting his status for the rest of the season up in the air. Although he tried to play through the injury, he was only to play 8 games after the 2010 season before the injury forced him to officially retire. If Savard hadn't gotten hurt, the Bruins and the entire NHL could look drastically different right now. I have created an alternate reality of what the Bruins would look like if Marc Savard never suffered a concussion, and was able to play well into his late 30s.
Before we begin, I would like to point out that all transactions are made by my somewhat unreliable mind. I tried to make them fair and realistic, but that probably won't be achieved. Also, if, for example, the Flames traded for Florida's 2016 4th round draft pick and that trade didn't actually happen in real life, it would be assumed that the Flames would simply pick the player that the Panthers picked in real life. I promise I didn’t intentionally rig the system so that the Bruins would only trade for draft picks that turned into good players.
2011: Having a healthy Marc Savard gives the Bruins much better depth at the center position than they actually had, meaning that there wouldn't be much reason to trade for Rich Peverley at the trade deadline. This means that the Bruins are able to keep Blake Wheeler, instead of trading him. I can't decide whether or not the Bruins will win the Stanley Cup in 2011, as having Savard on the top line with Lucic and Horton instead of Krejci might prevent some of the magic that Horton and Krejci showed in the 2011 playoffs. Maybe they win, maybe they lose.
2012: The Bruins are a better team on paper, but their season is pretty much unchanged from the actual 2012 season.
2013: Savard, who is slowing down slightly with age, is demoted to the third line. However, Jarome Iginla decides he has a better chance of winning in Boston playing alongside Savard than he would in Pittsburgh, and is traded to the Bruins. This deal almost happened in real life, but Iginla stepped in and said he wanted to go to Pittsburgh instead. The Bruins send Matt Bartkowski, Alex Kholklachev, and a 2013 1st (Jason Dickinson). With Iginla, Savard, and Wheeler on the team, the Bruins are able to beat the Blackhawks in the 2013 Stanley Cup Final, giving Iginla the ring he so deserves. However, the Bruins find themselves up against the cap after the season.
2014: In July, the Bruins trade Tyler Seguin to the Stars. The deal here is slightly different, as Rich Peverley, who isn't on the team, will obviously not be part of the deal. The Bruins trade F Tyler Seguin and F Chris Kelly in exchange for F Loui Eriksson, F Reilly Smith, and a 2014 DAL 2nd (Brett Pollock.)
2014: The Bruins still don't have the money to re-sign Blake Wheeler. So shortly after trading Seguin to the Stars, the Bruins traded Blake Wheeler to the San Jose Sharks in a 3-team trade that also involved the Philadelphia Flyers.
SJS Gets: F Blake Wheeler, 2014 PHI 6th (Radel Fazleyev)
PHI Gets: 2014 SJS 2nd (Jack Dougherty), 2015 SJS 4th (Anthony Richard)
BOS Gets: D Matt Irwin, F Matt Read, 2014 SJS 1st (Nick Schmaltz)
The Sharks were a team on the rise who could have definitely used a RW. They paid a high price, as they wouldn't pick until the 3rd round in 2014 and sacrificed a solid young defender in Irwin, but definitely made their team better. Philly was up against the cap as well, and they got high picks for Read, who probably wasn't going to stick around anyways. The Bruins free up cap space, and get two good, young depth players in Read and Irwin, as well as the 1st rounder.
2014: Irwin gives the Bruins extra depth at defense, so they don't have to trade for Andrej Meszaros, keeping their 2014 3rd (Mark Friedman).
2015: In reality, the Bruins give Reilly Smith to the Panthers just to offload Savard's contract, since Savard is retired and that money is going nowhere. However, the Bruins have Savard playing for them right now, and have no need to do that. Instead, they traded Savard, who is in the final year of his contract, to the St. Louis Blues in exchange for a 2015 STL 2nd and a 2016 STL 4th. Savard can play either center or left wing on the Blues' 3rd line, and brings leadership to a young team that is looking to make a deep playoff run. Who knows? Maybe Savard propels the Blues over the top. I hope so, because then I wouldn't feel guilty about saying that the Blues 2nd that they gave the Bruins ended up being Vince Dunn.
2016: The contract of Matt Read, the once-promising young forward acquired from Philly in the Wheeler trade, has started to become a liability. The Bruins gave him a pretty nice contract extension after he scored 22 goals in 2013-14, but his performance has since plummeted from a 2nd line spot to a 4th line spot, sometimes being a healthy scratch. The Oilers are willing to take a flyer on him, and the Bruins trade Read to Edemonton with a 50% retention on his salary for a swap of draft picks that gets the Bruins Dimitri Samorukov and the Oilers Declan Chisholm. They also sent the other part of said Wheeler trade, Matt Irwin, to the Coyotes for a swap of 6th rounders.
2017: The Drew Stafford trade is slightly different, with Boston sending 7th and 5th round picks to Winnipeg
2017: Vegas selects Ryan Spooner in the 2017 expansion draft. Spooner had scored 106 points in his past 3 seasons with Boston, and if it didn’t work out, the Golden Knights could simply trade him to the Oilers for Ryan Strome.
2018: The Bruins don’t need to sign Jaroslav Halak nor John Moore since they have Malcolm Subban as a backup goalie and Vince Dunn as a left defenseman.
2018: The Adam McQuaid trade is also slightly different, with the Bruins acquiring Steven Kampfer and a 3rd round pick (Zach Jones) from the Rangers for McQuaid.
2018: Nick Schmaltz, the 1st round pick Boston got from San Jose, is tearing it up in his sophomore season. With Schmaltz on Krejci’s right wing, the Bruins don’t need to trade for Rick Nash, saving them Matt Beleskey, Ryan Lindgren, and their 1st and 7th round picks. They did acquire Mark Boroweicki from the Senators for Peter Cehlarik and a 7th rounder (Pavel Shen).
2019: The Bruins also don’t have need for Marcus Johansson, but the Devils still do get 2nd and 4th round picks for taking on the contract of Matt Beleskey.
2019: The Bruins played the St. Louis Blues in the Stanley Cup Final. The series goes to 7 games, just like in real life. The first goal of the game is still scored by Vince Dunn, but, since Dunn is a Bruin in this Alternate Reality, the Bruins take the 1-0 lead. This gets the crowd into it, and the Bruins pull away with a 5-2 victory, with Reilly Smith, Jake DeBrusk, Charlie McAvoy, and David Pastrnak also scoring.
2019: Once more, the Bruins find themselves up against the cap. Their first move is to dump off the salary of David Backes to the Los Angeles Kings. The Kings do very well in this trade, getting Backes, the Bruins 2020 1st (Jacob Perreault), the Bruins 2021 3rd, and Ryan Lindgren for Adrian Kempe and Kyle Clifford.
2019: After three productive seasons and a Stanley Cup ring, Nick Schmaltz’s value has never been higher. The Bruins, who still need money for Charlie Coyle, as well as all their free agents after the 2020 season, decide to trade him to the Winnipeg Jets. This might be the most controversial trade of all of them, but the Jets send Jack Roslovic, Dylan Samburg and a 2020 1st round pick (Cole Perfetti) for Schmaltz and Jack Achan. Roslovic was a well-regarded prospect, but not the gem he is today. The Jets also anticipated the 1st rounder to be later than #10 overall. However, two years later, this trade looks like a fleecing by the Bruins. Roslovic has become just as good if not better than Schmaltz, and the Bruins nabbed Perfetti, largely considered a top-five prospect heading into the draft, at #10. The Jets were able to extend Schmaltz, as they had a hole at RW and a lot of cap room since Blake Wheeler is on the Sharks, but it sure looks like they got beat in this trade.
2020: Nothing different from what actually happened
2021: Sadly, Craig Smith, and Mike Reilly don’t join the Bruins, as they have good depth at both their respective positions. Taylor Hall could still be on the table if they don’t like what they see from Adrian Kempe. However, with the emergence of both Jeremy Swayman and Dan Vladar, Malcolm Subban became expendable. The Bruins traded him to the St. Louis Blues in exchange for a 2021 5th round pick.
The winners here are the Bruins, obviously, who won at least 2 Stanley Cups, depending on what happened in 2011. The Sharks have Blake Wheeler on their team (unless they decided to trade him, which could be a possibility), and maybe that leads them to put up a stronger fight against Pittsburgh in the 2016 Stanley Cup. Jarome Iginla got his ring, and the Kings got some really good players/picks from a literal salary dump. The losers are the Jets, who now have neither Blake Wheeler nor Cole Perfetti, in addition to not being able to get Pierre-Luc Dubouis because they don’t have Jack Roslovic, and the Blues, unless they were able to pull off some remarkable run in 2015, still are without a Stanley Cup.
Do you think this could have happened had Marc Savard not gotten hurt? Or would something else have happened? Would they keep Blake Wheeler instead of trading him? Would they screw up their 1st round pick in 2014 like they did with their 2015 picks instead of drafting Nick Schmaltz? I guess we’ll never know.
I don't think the Kings do your trade even if Backes isn't included. Kempe and Clifford together are worth significantly more than a late 1st, a 3rd, and Ryan Lindgren.
Savy was one of my favorite Bs from the last 20 years (as well as the only sweater that I have ever purchased from the pro shop). He and Chara put the Bruins back on the map after the decade they spend wandering the wilderness in the Boston sports landscape. I wouldn’t trade that 2011 season/team for anything, but this was one of the most interesting things that I’ve seen on this site. Nice effort.
My issue with these types of things is that they assume the same level of development with all teams and players.
Take Barzal as the low hanging fruit. He doesn't get the 2nd line time he got in NY behind Tavares and doesn't break out. Since Tavares has left, he is a 60pt player. Not the 85 we saw in his rookie year.
If Boston Drafts him he doesn't crack the lineup as soon. Bergeron is your 1C and Krejci is your 2C, I don't see that changing. Especially in Boston. Boston requires their centers to be good defensively - Barzal is not, and to be able to win faceoffs. Barzal does not. He might have been switched to a wing, but again, he isn't getting top PP time and he isn't playing center in Boston.
it's the same with the entire 2015 draft. Chabot has one really good breakout year and then leveled off. He's a good player, don't get me wrong, but he doesn't push Krug out of the way for Top PP, he just doesn't. He is probably their 3rd LD behind Krug and Chara (until this year). A good problem to have, but also not one that allows the players to develop as they have when you know... they actually play.
Laine in CBJ is a pretty glaring example of that. The Bruins very much come from that Claude, Torts, Trotz school of defensively responsible systems.
Same can be said in the other direction - If Marchand never plays with Bergeron, Recchi and Claude, he probably turns into Alex Burrows or David Perron.
I don't think the Kings do your trade even if Backes isn't included. Kempe and Clifford together are worth significantly more than a late 1st, a 3rd, and Ryan Lindgren.
Clifford is worth a 5th. So Kempe is worth a 1st, a 2nd (Lindgren) and a 3rd?
My issue with these types of things is that they assume the same level of development with all teams and players.
Take Barzal as the low hanging fruit. He doesn't get the 2nd line time he got in NY behind Tavares and doesn't break out. Since Tavares has left, he is a 60pt player. Not the 85 we saw in his rookie year.
If Boston Drafts him he doesn't crack the lineup as soon. Bergeron is your 1C and Krejci is your 2C, I don't see that changing. Especially in Boston. Boston requires their centers to be good defensively - Barzal is not, and to be able to win faceoffs. Barzal does not. He might have been switched to a wing, but again, he isn't getting top PP time and he isn't playing center in Boston.
it's the same with the entire 2015 draft. Chabot has one really good breakout year and then leveled off. He's a good player, don't get me wrong, but he doesn't push Krug out of the way for Top PP, he just doesn't. He is probably their 3rd LD behind Krug and Chara (until this year). A good problem to have, but also not one that allows the players to develop as they have when you know... they actually play.
Laine in CBJ is a pretty glaring example of that. The Bruins very much come from that Claude, Torts, Trotz school of defensively responsible systems.
Same can be said in the other direction - If Marchand never plays with Bergeron, Recchi and Claude, he probably turns into Alex Burrows or David Perron.
I get what you're saying, and it probably would affect this scenario. I had Marchand playing on that 2nd line with Bergeron and Recchi, Bergeron and Seguin and then Bergeron and Smith, so I don't think that would be a problem. However, Blake Wheeler would have been playing mostly on the third line when in Boston, and although he'd be playing alongside either Savard or Krejci, his ice time would be less than in Atlanta/Winnipeg. Also Jake DeBrusk was stuck behind Reilly Smith and Nick Schmaltz, so he may not develop too well either.
I don't think the Kings do your trade even if Backes isn't included. Kempe and Clifford together are worth significantly more than a late 1st, a 3rd, and Ryan Lindgren.
The Kings have a ton of cap space, so taking on Backes isn't as bad as it would be for most teams. So we'll say the Kings get the first for taking on Backes. Then they basically get Lindgren for Kempe and Clifford for the 3rd rounder. I mean, what do the Kings need with all that cap space? They're rebuilding. They're basically getting Lindgren for Kempe and quality draft picks for their trouble.
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