Boston To Add But Contracts Will Make Things Hard
Dave Pagnotta of the Fourth Period was on Sirius XM NHL Network Radio on Thursday’s Power Play segment with Steve Kouleas and Frankie Corrado and was asked about the Boston Bruins and if there could be more changes coming in Boston besides the coach.
NHLRumors.com Transcriptions
NHL Rumors: Did the Boston Bruins Want To Extend Jim Montgomery
Frankie Corrado: “In regards to the Boston Bruins, like, we don’t so they fire Jim Montgomery. Like, how much roster tweaking can they possibly do? Like you bring in (Elias) Lindholm he’s got term. There’s a few guys that are not going to move there. Like, it’s just, how much can they actually do here? Or is it just they have to rely on the new coach bump and see if that kind of brings them where they have to go?”
Dave Pagnotta: “It definitely makes it. You know, their situation isn’t easy. They got a little tiny bit of wiggle room cap wise, but if they want to do anything impactful, yeah, they got to move out roster guys. And you look at some of the guys that apparently are available, depending on who you talk to around the league.
NHL Rumors: The Boston Bruins and Brad Marchand
I mean Charlie Coyle is a guy who’s out there, but he has some no trade protection. He’s got another year in his contract. It’s not a low cap hit, and he hasn’t been producing. So I mean, he’s not an attractive asset right now. He would help financially if they were to move those dollars out to bring in someone else, but you’ve got to convince a team to take them. So this isn’t an easy situation for them.
Like you said, you have a seven year contract to Lindholm. He’s on pace for under 40 points right now, and yes, he does good things defensively, but offensively, it just it’s not up to snub. They gave a long term deal for (Nikita) Zadorov, and they thought that guys like Coyle and (Morgan) Geekie and a couple others would be able to step up and provide offense secondary scoring anyway, it just hasn’t been the case.
NHL Rumors: Montreal Canadiens, and the Boston Bruins
They’d like to bring in a scorer to add to their top six on the wing. It just, it’s certainly difficult to do financially. And again, like I said, you got to convince another team to take on a contract in some fashion. So Don Sweeney has been looking.
The easy move right now is, yeah, you make the coaching change and you hope that sparks something, and you go from there. But it’s not going to eliminate and discredit the fact that they don’t have enough quality depth on this team, not right now anyway.”