With the NHL trade deadline fast approaching, the Boston Bruins have just about answered the question of whether they should be buyers or sellers.
After losing a third straight game, 3-2 in overtime to Anaheim Saturday night, the Bruins are one point shy of the final wild card spot in the Eastern Conference. Add to that Charlie McAvoy being out and Hampus Lindholm now being unlikely to return to this season, and Don Sweeney’s hand looks to be forced in the direction of a sell-off deadline.
However, comments from Sweeney on Sunday regarding a potential contract extension for captain Brad Marchand, arguably one of the best trade pieces on the roster, may complicate the Bruins’ deadline plans.
“We've been in negotiations with Brad and communicating with him throughout the year,” Sweeney said. “We'll have to have a conversation now that 4 Nations is over, sit down with Brad and his representatives, and have a clearer path in the next two weeks as to what his final outcome will be.”
If the Bruins give the 36-year-old a contract extension, it will likely end any further trade talks. But, WEEI’s Greg Hill said Monday morning on The Greg Hill Show that the contract talks could just be a PR tactic to drive up Marchand’s trade value.
“If you are thinking of shopping somebody and you want to get max value, then you talk about how you can't wait to re-sign him and give him whatever he wants, because he's Brad Marchand,” Hill said.
Greg Hill Show producer Chris Curtis agreed, saying it wouldn’t be smart for the Bruins to publicly talk about trading Marchand.
“In zero capacity does it benefit the team to publicly discuss trading Marchand until the deal has been consummated,” Curtis said. “You're already going to deal with backlash when you make the deal. Why would you let people in on the fact that you're shopping him right before you actually execute the transaction?”
“If I'm running the Bruins, to me, and you don't do a full firesale, offload anybody that you don't view as part of your core going forward, then you're doing a disservice to the organization,” Curtis continued.
The third member of The Greg Hill Show, Jermaine Wiggins, also fully bought in on the theory.
“What he's actually telling the league and the team that he could potentially trade him to is that Brad still wants to play,” Wiggy said.
Wiggy believed that Sweeney was speaking more to other front offices than he was to Bruins fans. If the Bruins are interested in extending Marchand, then a contending team trading for him could also be interested in an extension.
“That new team that would trade for a guy like Brad Marchand and would go, ‘Oh, we can now maybe sign him for another couple of years, and he can obviously help us this year to get over the hump, but he'll still be part of [our] organization for the next couple of years to win a Stanley Cup,’ because you're not going to trade him to some crappy team. You're going to trade him to a contender,” Wiggy said.
Before we go ahead and crown Sweeney as a Sun-Tzu-esque strategic genius, there’s still a chance that he’s not playing 3D chess with the rest of the NHL and is actually considering extending Marchand. If so, Curtis believes it would be a mistake not to close a chapter on his era of the Bruins.
“For me, this whole core of Marchand, Bergeron, Chara, that era is one of the more overrated eras in the history of Boston sports. They won once and they haven't won in 14 years. And so to me, I want to see the direction of this team, I want to see a new coach, I'd like to see a new GM, right? But either way…extending Marchand makes zero sense,” Curtis said.
The Bruins have six games left until the March 7 trade deadline, starting Tuesday night when they take on the Toronto Maple Leafs at TD Garden.