Don Sweeney wasn’t taking any chances. Not this year. Not with this team.
The Bruins already had arguably the best defense corps in the NHL, but Sweeney has seen good blue lines suffer injuries and break down in postseasons past. He wasn’t taking that chance again, so last week he went out and traded for a legitimate top-four defenseman with Stanley Cup pedigree in Dmitry Orlov. Orlov, by the way, now has eight points in four games with Boston after recording a goal and two assists in Thursday night's 7-1 beatdown of the Sabres.
The Bruins’ forward group was already as loaded as any in the NHL, but Sweeney knew his team has lacked a little bit in the physicality department in the past. He wanted his team to create more “anxiety” on the forecheck, so he made sure to get someone who will do that by acquiring Garnet Hathaway along with Orlov.
The Bruins hope one or both of Taylor Hall and Nick Foligno -- both injured in the past week -- will be back for the playoffs, but their injuries created a hole likely for the rest of the regular season and possibly longer. Sweeney wasn’t about to make any assumptions regarding their returns, so on Thursday he pulled off a trade for Tyler Bertuzzi, a top-six talent who put up 62 points last season, who can play on either wing and on any line, and who isn’t afraid to get his nose dirty.
Somewhere in between all the trade negotiations, Sweeney also finalized an eight-year, $90 million extension with David Pastrnak, clearing the skies of one of the few clouds that had been lingering overhead all season.
This is what all-in looks like. This is what you do when you have a veteran team that has now reached 100 points faster than any team in NHL history. Sweeney could have tried to hold out for better deals. He could have tried to hang on to some draft picks knowing that the Bruins are going to need young, cheap reinforcements at some point in the years to come.
Instead he acted decisively and traded away six draft picks, including his next two first-round picks, to improve this roster. The Bruins now won’t have a first-round pick until 2025. They won’t have a second-round pick until 2026.
There are going to be difficult roster decisions to make this summer with eight players hitting unrestricted free agency (including all three players acquired via trade), two more hitting restricted free agency (Trent Frederic and Jeremy Swayman), and now under $11 million in projected cap space with Pastrnak’s new deal coming in at $11.25 million per year.
Finding a No. 1 center of the future for whenever Patrice Bergeron retires has gotten more challenging with so little draft capital remaining.
None of it matters. At least not right now. Those are problems Sweeney is going to have to deal with in the future, but his job in the present was to give this year’s potentially historic team the best possible chance to win the Stanley Cup in what might be the final season for Bergeron and David Krejci.
Even Sweeney’s harshest critics have to acknowledge that he has done that. With one home run trade after another -- from Hall to Hampus Lindholm to Pavel Zacha and now to Orlov, Hathaway and Bertuzzi -- and some major financial help from the discounts Bergeron and Krejci took for this season, Sweeney has put together the most complete roster in the NHL.
The front office has done its part. Now it’s up to the players to finish what they’ve already started and close out this magical season the way they want and expect to.
“They’ve obviously shown they have a ton of faith and they kind of have that all-in approach with the moves that they’ve made and how they want to improve the group, the depth they’ve added,” Brad Marchand said Thursday. “It does fall within the group here now. They did their job. We have to do ours now.”
It won’t be easy. The rest of the Eastern Conference contenders have been loading up with blockbuster trades of their own to chase the Bruins down -- if not in the regular season, then in the playoffs, they hope.
Even with Bertuzzi and Hathaway in the fold, the injuries to Hall and Foligno could hurt if they linger into or through the playoffs. There will be other injuries to overcome, too. One or two serious ones to a key player or two could derail even this team.
The Bruins got such a scare Thursday night when Marchand exited with a lower-body injury of some kind. Bruins coach Jim Montgomery said after the game that, “We think it’s gonna be all right, but we’re not positive yet.”
As the Bruins wake up on trade deadline day and look ahead to the final 21 games of the regular season, they know that they are as all-in as all-in gets.
The entire organization has embraced the idea that this is a “special” season. The front office has shown how much they believe that by making two significant trades to upgrade an already loaded roster. After 3 p.m. Friday, the rest is up to the players.
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