Quoting: Bruinsdiehard
We could go back and forth, and who wouldn't love that lol? But I just gotta clarify:
1. When the season ends, the salary cap no longer exists. There is no salary cap in the playoffs. So that really isn't relevant to the issue of not having enough players on hand in a cap crunch.
Wasn't really talking playoffs, more so from post TDL to end of the regular season.
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2. I don't recall hearing of any players being called up from Providence after they were eliminated from the playoffs? I certainly could have missed something, but could you name who the Bruins did call up?
Per transactions the following players were recalled on May 2nd, 2018:
Anton Blidh
Austin Czarnik
Chris Breen
Colby Cave
Jakob Forsbacka-Karlsson
Jakub Zboril
Jordan Szwarz
Paul Postma
Tommy Cross
Zach Senyshyn
Zane McIntyre
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3. I agree that realistically the Bruins probably won't be signing Tavares; but that's more so a product of Sweeney's lack of vision with FAs and unwillingness to pursue Tavares. However, when Tavares does sign his new contract, unless the team name is "Montreal" or "Buffalo", I would not expect his contract to be outside of that 10-10.5M range. Any team that Tavares would realistically like to go to (Toronto, Sharks, Knights, Penguins) are not going to be able to afford much more than that. And from all the media speculation about Tavares desire to leave NYI due to lack of organizational competitiveness, why would he want to sign with one of those teams that could pay him a max contract and then suck for the rest of his career? Yes he's been underpaid for the last few years, but 70-73.5M on a 10-10.5M/year contract is certainly nothing to sneeze at if he's looking to get paid and be competitive?
Not sure I'd say Sweeney as a lack of vision with FA's as much as he just envisions building the team via the draft. Boston has quite a few RFA's coming up that they need to be mindful of and keep some flexibility to make in season moves. In this example you've done, we'll have roughly $17 million in cap space next off-season (assuming $82 million ceiling) with McAvoy, Carlo, Donato, JFK, Heinen, Chara and then guys to fill in the rest of the roster. Now you could pay someone to try and take Backes or Krejci, but that's going to cost you some significant assets. Is it possible? sure, but its not very probable.
Trust me I've played around with the idea of JT as early as last year on this site. I just remember the days 3-4 years ago when we were tight to the cap and it hindered us from making significant moves (thanks PC) and I really don't want to go back to that.