Same-day analysis: What happened to Boston's internal cap?
By signing Charlie McAvoy to an eight-year contract extension worth $76 million, the Bruins locked up a key piece of their future...and went way off their beaten path
The first thing that came to mind upon seeing the terms of Charlie McAvoy’s eight-year contract extension with the Boston Bruins was, “Hmm, it would be interesting to know how Brad Marchand, Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci feel about this.” On one hand, they’re probably thrilled that their best defenseman has made a long-term commitment to the organization. On the other, would anyone blame them for feeling just a little resentful that it appears the Bruins have abandoned their internal salary cap?
Check that. The Bruins haven’t just abandoned it. With their eight-year, $76 million contract extension to McAvoy, they’ve packed a wad of dynamite around it and blown it to Kingdom Come, and with it an organizational philosophy that had guided them and their players for years and has kept the salaries of their star players far below market value. For as long as the Bruins have been contenders in this era, their best players have been underpaid. As recently as two years ago, Zdeno Chara played for them for $3.5 million. When Bergeron, Marchand and Krejci signed their deals in Boston, they were all on either on the verge of becoming – or in the case of Bergeron, already were – among the best in the league at their positions. All signed deals for less than market value and all have definitely outperformed those deals.
And that was perfectly OK because all those contracts were signed under the clear understanding that if you wanted to be a part of one of the league’s upper-tier franchises, one that consistently delivers a Stanley Cup contender, well, you simply had to take less money than a good number of your peers – and in some cases, players who weren’t even close to being your peers – because that would leave plenty of salary cap space to pursue players who would keep the Bruins at the top of the league. Some players were certainly more vocal about it than others, but they all believed and espoused it. Marchand, in particular, would mention every chance he had that he had no problem with his salary because that’s the way the Bruins did things.
But if I’m Marchand right now, I’d be wondering what I’ve been doing all these years and why I so staunchly defended this philosophy. And I’d wonder what happened that changed it.
Check that…again. We all know what, or more specifically who, has prompted the Bruins to do an about-face here. Cale Makar, Darnell Nurse, Zach Werenski, Dougie Hamilton, Seth Jones and Miro Heiskanen prompted it. In the space of a couple of months over the summer, those players caused the defense market to explode. So that explains why McAvoy got a big-money deal. What it doesn’t explain is why he got $9.5 million, particularly given that it is probably even more than he would have received on the open market. And it’s not as though the Bruins were in any jeopardy of losing McAvoy in the short-term, since they have him under contract for this season, then had two more arbitration years before he became an unrestricted free agent.
Now don’t get me wrong, McAvoy had every right to demand and receive the contract he got from GM Don Sweeney, particularly since he had already done his part and taken a three-year bridge deal worth $4.9 million per year that expires after this season. He’ll be only 24 years old when this contract kicks in and the Bruins will have purchased six years of UFA status. That’s a lot of security for the team and there’s a price attached to that.
And it’s not as though the Bruins are the only ones who expect their players to take less. For my money, with a cap hit of $12.5 million, Connor McDavid is the most underpaid player in the NHL, perhaps in all of professional sports. Sidney Crosby, Nathan MacKinnon, Mark Scheifele, Leon Draisaitl – all underpaid. After this time of reckoning, the salary cap will again go up, and at some point that figure will take up less room than it would right now. You can argue that while McAvoy has never been a Norris Trophy finalist – and may never be one in the future – he provides the Bruins with good value, even at that number.
But it makes you wonder what kind of mood Bergeron will be in when his contract expires after this season. The Bruins certainly won’t be able to go to him to convince him to take below market value – whatever that is for a 37-year-old future Hall of Famer. Not this time. And you have to wonder what it means for Adam Fox, the reigning Norris Trophy winner whose entry-level deal with the New York Rangers expires after this season. If there’s a young man who is sitting back and tapping his fingers together with glee right about now, it’s Adam Fox.