The Bruins promised to be uncharacteristically cautious headed into the NHL trade deadline, and they lived up to that with an eerily quiet Friday as most of the rest of the league was conducting a flurry of business.
The B’s were obviously heavy into the trade talks for defenseman Rasmus Andersson prior to the Olympic break, only to watch the Vegas Golden Knights complete the deal, but that willingness to wheel and deal changed coming out of the Olympic break. Some of it was perhaps the way the Bruins have not been able to generate the same high level of play that they did prior to the Olympics, but another major aspect of the inactive trade deadline was the seller’s market, where prices were exceedingly high to make a trade.
The Bruins looked at a first-round pick being sent out for Nicolas Roy and a second-round pick surrendered for Michael McCarron and said “no thanks” to players like Connor Garland, Justin Faulk or first and second rounders surrendered from Nazem Kadri. It just didn’t make sense to overpay for a player that wasn’t the “right” player for the Bruins, where they could help this season’s surprising playoff efforts and also settle in as a piece for the long haul as the roster is expected to evolve and improve over the next couple of years.
“For almost [all] of the [last 10] years, we were in that absolute mindset [of being very active at the trade deadline]. And I also said that our expectation was for us [this season] to be in the exact situation of challenging to be in the playoffs, and that’s what we should be doing,” said Don Sweeney. “I would have liked to have added to the group, to the level that…to always want to improve our team.
“Now, we did enough due diligence that maybe that applies [to a trade] at the draft or afterwards, or maybe we take our picks because we’re committed to the process that we started. But you’re always running different scenarios that you can improve your hockey club, whether that was today or yesterday. That is the mandate. The mandate is to continue to get better. We stayed committed. There’s no question. We didn’t deviate from what we felt was the right choice [to stand pat with the current group] and I’m hoping that pays dividends right now with the guys that are still here because they’ve earned that right to carry us forward and moving forward as an organization”
To that end, Sweeney also indicated that the Bruins have discussed contract extensions with both Andrew Peeke and Viktor Arvidsson as players they would like to keep in the fold moving forward.
The Bruins did make a couple of smaller depth moves, with the most significant being the acquisition of German forward Lukas Reichel from the Vancouver Canucks in exchange for a sixth-round pick. The speedy Reichel is a former first round pick that has played 188 NHL games over the course of his time with the Blackhawks and Canucks and fits the same kind of profile as players like Morgan Geekie, Marat Khusnutdinov, Alex Steeves and others that the Bruins scouts have identified over the years.
Clearly the Bruins like the
