B’s ink Grzelcyk to four-year deal
Hometown product will likely get shot to fill Krug’s role
The Bruins took care one of their remaining pieces of business on Saturday by inking defenseman Matt Grzelcyk to a four-year extension, thus avoiding the arbitration hearing that was scheduled for Tuesday.
The left-shot defenseman’s deal will have an average annual value of $3,687,000, leaving the B’s with approximately $6.6 million to sign restricted free agents Jake DeBrusk, Karson Kuhlman and Zach Senyshyn and unrestricted free agent Zdeno Chara. Barring a trade, there would appear to be little left over to do any more free agent shopping. In a year-byyear money breakdown, Grzelcyk will earn $2.25 million in the first year of the deal, then $4 million the second and $4.25 million the final two seasons, all salary.
So far, GM Don Sweeney’s biggest impact signing has been middle six forward Craig Smith. He also added forward Greg McKegg on a two-way deal.
While there may be nothing on the front burner, Sweeney said he hasn’t taken himself out of the game with regard to outside acquisitions just yet.
“We continue to look for depth opportunity for players and, with trade conversations, we may have a hole to fill. I really don’t know. I wouldn’t say we have anything imminent to put forth,” said Sweeney. “We signed Greg McKegg from a depth standpoint and we’ll have an internal competition as well. As I’ve mentioned before, we have several players that are knocking on the door and we’d like to see them continue to push, both in our forward group and our back end. … We’re still waiting to see how this season plays out. I’m comfortable that at some point in time we’ll get up and running and our guys will be ready to go. We felt all along that we’ll need some internal growth. As far as the cap space, we’re in very comfortable position to finalize our RFA guys that we have to and we may have opportunities to pursue otherwise.”
Sweeney said that he expects deals for Senyshyn and Kuhlman and he doesn’t believe “they’re that far off from being resolved.”
While he didn’t comment directly on a possible DeBrusk deal, that one promises to be a little more difficult. The left winger has numbers that could have landed him in a decent contract in arbitration, the filing of which served as the engine to close the gap between the Grzelcyk camp and the B’s. But DeBrusk is not yet eligible for arbitration and there have been rumblings that he could be looking for deal worth close to $5 million.
As for the captain, Chara’s agent Matt Keator has said the 43-year-old defenseman is in “no rush” to ink any deal in this uncertain landscape — no one knows when the season is even going to start or what it will look like — but Sweeney said that is not holding him up in doing his business.
“We’ve communicated consistently with Zdeno and Matt Keator. We’re just waiting for him to initiate what he’d like to do moving forward. I feel very comfortable in allowing that to take the necessary time and let Zdeno make his own decisions,” said Sweeney.
As for the expectations for
Grzelcyk, there is a big hole to fill with the loss of Torey Krug to free agency, especially on the power-play.
“As far as Matt’s ceiling, I think it’s a little bit to be determined, with the opportunity and how well he plays. Obviously, there is a vacancy,” said Sweeney, who expects he’ll get a chance at the PP. “I had a lot of conversations with our coaching staff about where they see the player fitting in and how he affects our transition game, his ability to move the puck and our D-zone exits. And the rest is up to Matt to take advantage of a pretty good opportunity for him moving forward.”
Meanwhile, some good players remain on the market, including Mike Hoffman, Anthony Duclair and Andreas Athanasiou, but there is only so much money to go around in the league with the salary cap stuck at $81.5 million.
“I think the squeeze is there, regardless of whether or not you want to start at the top, bottom or middle. I think every player and every team is being affected,” said Sweeney. “When the flat cap was announced for this year and the subsequent years moving forward, we knew there was going to be a squeeze. Player movement at times indicate that teams just
have to loosen things up and other teams are not able to loosen things up. Those make for good opportunities for each and every one of us to continue to explore. As far as the players that remain, there are some very, very good hockey players that will help some teams. May have to look at some different situations
where it’s a re-platform. I saw a player signed the other day with Ottawa that got a longerterm deal (Evgenii Dadonov). And every player has to analyze for themselves and see where they fit in the marketplace and where they’re comfortable and with the conversation they have with the teams.”