B’s must make a move
Neely cautious as trade deadline nears
The Bruins are in an even better spot now than team president Cam Neely could have imagined when he elevated Don Sweeney to the general manager’s post less than three years ago.
Not only are the B’s sitting on a large stockpile of high-end draft picks, they are one point behind Tampa Bay for the most points in the NHL.
Whether they planned for it to happen this quickly or not, their time is now. They are contenders.
And as such, it is incumbent upon the Bruins to explore any and every way to attain that piece that puts them over the top.
With still time before the Feb. 26 trade deadline, Neely wasn’t about to detail the club’s game plan, but it’s clear he is kicking the appropriate tires, from Edmonton to Manhattan, on players who could help for the short term, like forwards Patrick Maroon or Rick Nash, to possibly a bigger-impact player in defenseman Ryan McDonagh.
Neely did say, without mentioning any names of course, that he’s willing to part with prospects to get better. And the B’s have them. They have two firstrounders at left defense (Jakub Zboril in Providence and Urho Vaakanainen in Finland) and two secondrounders at left defense (Jeremy Lauzon in Providence and Ryan Lindgren at the University of Minnesota), plus first-round center (Trent Frederic at Wisconsin) and two second-round pivots (Jakob Forsbacka Karlsson in Providence and Jack Studnicka in junior hockey). At wing, there’s a first-rounder (Zach Senyshyn in Providence) and second-rounder (Harvard’s Ryan Donato currently at the Olympics).
The Bruins could conceivably dish two or three prospects plus a high pick, and the cupboard would still be bursting.
But to land the big fish, namely McDonagh, it would most likely take a roster player and a pick. When asked how reticent he’d be to deal someone off this current team, Neely hesitated. Granted, it’s still poker season, so take that hesitation with a boulder of salt, but there are reasonable arguments against it.
“It’s a great group of guys. It really is,” Neely said. “They’re all pulling on the same rope, and the chemistry seems to be really strong right now, so that’s something we’ve talked about with this group, chemistry. Historically we’ve seen things happen at the deadline where maybe teams after the fact say we’ve made too many deep moves and disrupted the chemistry. So that’s something we’re cautious about.”
The name most observers throw out to get McDonagh, who has another year left at a team-friendly $4.7 million, is Brandon Carlo. That would not work well for the B’s. That’s not to say Carlo is in the untouchable category — among the youth, that list begins and ends with Charlie McAvoy — but right defense is one spot where the B’s are prospect-poor. If Carlo was dealt, that would leave them with McAvoy, Kevan Miller, Adam McQuaid and Paul Postma on the right side. Considering McQuaid and/or Miller are bound to get injured again because of the way they play, that’s not good enough.
On one level, Torey Krug could be a fit. The B’s would save a half-million on salary with McDonagh, and the Rangers would get an extra year of cost certainty with Krug. But while the B’s would make a gain defensively with McDonagh, they would lose quite a bit on the power play without Krug. And harkening back to what Neely said about chemistry, Krug is very much a part of it, even earning the “A” for a game in Detroit. Could defenseman Matt Grzelcyk help get it done? With the right number and quality of prospects, maybe.
The looming decisions won’t be easy. Nobody likes to “lose” a trade, but for a team in the B’s position, sometimes that’s what it takes to get over the hump. The uninformed might think they got hosed on the Blake Wheeler-for-Rich Peverley deal in 2011, but it helped snap a 39-year Stanley Cup drought.
And just because the Bruins are in this position this year doesn’t mean they’ll be here next year. Since mid-November, the players and coaches have played to win every night. Now it’s management’s turn.