The Boston Bruins are in Columbus, Ohio, tonight, continuing their prep work for the 2009-10 season. There is a lot of anticipation surrounding this year's team, a team that fell one goal short of advancing to the NHL's final four last spring.
Now, they will try to take that next step without Phil Kessel, who scored a team-high 36 goals last season. Phil Kessel is in Toronto with the Maple Leafs after a very public separation. It was inevitable Kessel would not be wearing black and gold this fall.
"Let me be perfectly clear on this trade," Bruins General Manager Peter Chiarelli said Saturday. "This thing happened for two reasons: one, a player who did not want to play in Boston and two, it's about the threat, the perceived threat, of an offer sheet. Really, that's what this trade is all about."
The threat of an offer sheet was not news. As a restricted free agent, Kessel had the opportunity to sign a deal offered by another team at any time. The Bruins could have matched that deal or taken draft picks as compensation. Now that we know the Leafs were prepared to sign Kessel to a five-year, $27 million contract, it's easy to understand that the Bruins had no intention of locking him up for the long term.
Problem is, no other team was prepared to offer Kessel that kind of money, either. There have been numerous reports the Nashville Predators were offering a package that included at least one prospect ready to play in the NHL, but the Predators could not take the risk of giving up talent for a player who wouldn't sign – or would still sign another team's offer sheet.
"There wasn't a team, but for one, that was willing to make a firm offer and willing to pay the player the amount of money he was requesting," said Chiarelli.
In the end, it left Chiarelli with no wiggle room. He had a very valuable asset sitting on the sideline. There aren't many 21-year-olds who scored 36 goals in one season in the NHL. Yet, there never seemed to be a comfortable fit between this talented young player and Claude Julien, a coach who stresses a rigid, defense-first system. It made a lot more sense to move on, trading the player and getting something back.
Which, in the end, is exactly what the Bruins did. Problem is, they didn't get anything in return to help them this season.
They've got a strong team, even without Kessel, and have a host of draft picks in the next two seasons. That said, Bruins fans want this team to win now. They've been waiting to drink from the Stanley Cup for 37 years, and the promise of a highly touted player out of juniors or college or even Europe won't help them look beyond this season.
Of course, Chiarelli could use his surplus of picks to acquire a player to help this year. That might not happen until the trade deadline approaches. That's when the Bruins got Mark Recchi a year ago, and he was a big addition for the playoffs.
"At the end of the day, we want players who want to be here," said Chiarelli.
In the end, Chiarelli made the best of what was becoming a bad situation. Unfortunately, it isn't the best thing for the team that will take the ice for its first regular-season game on Oct. 1.
Tom Caron is the studio host for Red Sox broadcasts on the New England Sports Network. His column appears in the Press Herald on Tuesdays.
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