The Boston Bruins have an awful lot of players under contract at least up to the proposed inaugural Seattle NHL season, are any of them particularly compelling this far out?
(As always, my criteria are here and I'm using hockeydb.com and capfriendly.com data to help me out.)
Boston will certainly be competitive in the next few years, but it's not hard to imagine one of these eight (!) players winding up in Seattle as much to help Boston refresh an aging roster as anything else.
Forwards: David Krejci, Patrice Bergeron, David Pastrnak, Brad Marchand, David Backes, Sean Kuraly
Defensemen/Defencemen: John Moore
Goalies: Tuukka Rask
Wow. Now, granted, a lot of these guys are already over 30 or will be by the time this is an issue. That said, how great would it be to have these choices? I know, time for the cold water of No Movement Clauses.
Krejci, Bergeron, Marchand and Backes all have the aforementioned NMCs, so barring them choosing to make themselves available we can eliminate them. Rask has a modified No Trade Clause, none of the other three candidates have any such restrictions listed.
Moore seems unlikely, since they literally just signed him last week. Also, assuming Boston's main motivation here being cap relief, he's not providing much as a "mere" $2.75 million yearly. Kuraly was also signed last week, though his was only for three years as opposed to Moore's five.
Pastrnak and Kuraly are markedly younger than the other six guys here, which would be a strong inventive to keep them. Rask's (expiring) $7 million yearly stipend would come in awfully handy for a team that's usually close to the cap. Conversely, I'm not sure how high on any goalie prospects Boston is to contemplate moving on from their longtime goalie. Assuming Boston either gets Rask to take a cheaper next contract or gets another starter, I'm going to go with
Sean Kuraly (Centre/Center/Left Wing)
Why Boston Would Make Him Available: Considering I literally hadn't heard of the guy until starting to research this article, I'm going to go out on a limb here that he might not be the most irreplaceable guy on their roster. With the aforementioned Bergeron, Backes and Marchand (among others, though he is both a center and left wing) in front of him on the depth chart this could be a numbers issue as much as anything else. There could be more "there" there, but it's hard to see how he's going to get the chance to show it in Boston.
Why Seattle Would Select Him: If I'm positing in the previous paragraph that he might not get a real opportunity in Boston if he stays, Seattle would be nothing but opportunity. I'm sure there will be "bigger" names joining him in the Puget Sound, but he wouldn't be competing with multi-time All-Stars. I'm not saying he's the next William Karlsson necessarily, but it's not hard to imagine him being more useful to Seattle than he ever could be to Boston.
He is far from the sexiest name Seattle could get, but that certainly wouldn't preclude seeing what he could possibly do if given the chance.
