My Opinion on acquiring a dman

Team: 2020-21 Boston Bruins

Initial Creation Date: Dec. 29, 2020

Published: Dec. 29, 2020

Salary Cap Mode: Basic

I see a ton of posts on here of people acquiring a top 4 level dman and they would want to do it as soon as today. Sami Vatanen shouldn't be a Bruin and I'll be very upset and critical if they were to do that. Here are reasons why they shouldn't (and won't).

1) It's time for the young guys.

Zboril, Lauzon, Vaakanainen. Those 3 have a huge opportunity this year to legitimately prove themselves. Lauzon already practically established his floor as a third pairing, gritty defenseman. His upside is the question and this season we will learn more about that. Jakub Zboril is the interesting one, we never got to see much of a sample size of his game (although his samples weren't great). He's finally gonna get his chance. Vaakanainen was once, and to some still is, a very hyped up prospect. He had a very promising first pro season with the Boston organization and slumped a bit this past season. I saw some flash in this game and I really hope he can prove some people wrong this season.

This staff clearly has confidence in some of these young dmen so all we have to do is trust them for now. If they don't pan out this season, it's fine. At least we get to say they got their chance.

2) Seattle expansion

Acquiring a long term dman (Hanifin) has terrible consequences for this Boston team. This was arguably the biggest reason Krug wasn't re-signed. If Boston were to acquire a long term dman, this leaves Matt Grzelcyk and/or Debrusk/Kase exposed to the draft. For obvious reasons, this team can't afford to lose a player of that caliber at this stage.

3) .....Ben Hutton?

Here is the current Boston rumor- signing Ben Hutton. He had a pretty good season with the Kings and spent majority of time in the top 4. For the record, I'm not totally against bringing him in, but why bother? If this whole time the plan was to ride these young dmen, why bring in another LHD who's in reality a 3rd pairing guy when this team already has a complete log jam? I like bringing him in for depth reasons, especially if Chara doesn't return, but I also don't want him to block these young dmen. He's just a better John Moore...so what does bringing in Hutton do to John Moore? I mean can you ACTUALLY trade John Moore? Doubt it. Hutton coming in makes John Moore very useless. I won't lose sleep failing at bringing in Hutton, but I'm not totally against it either. I just wouldn't get bringing in another depth defenseman days before camp...that tells me their plans went wrong.


So overall, it's the young guys time to shine. We need to know what we have in these young guys. After a few years of just a stacked LHD core, they never got a major opportunity. Every season we knew they weren't gonna make the team. This staff is confident enough to see what they can do. Let's be patient with this. Some people will look like fools if one of these dmen can take that next step and fill that void.

If they don't pan out, THEN you go out next offseason and get a dman. Or for a short term fix, you get a cheap rental at the deadline. And you can kiss the idea of trading first round picks goodbye, this team is done trading their first round pick.