By Spencer Murray
Throughout his tenure in Boston, General Manager Peter Chiarelli has made both incredible and questionable moves. One of his greatest moves was trading forward Phil Kessel to Toronto for some draft picks with which Boston picked Tyler Seguin and won the Stanley Cup a year later. However, he made a questionable trade when he had Tyler Seguin sent to the Dallas Stars for Loui Eriksson and Reilly Smith. In his first year in Dallas, Seguin had 84 points in 80 games and already has 10 points in 6 games this year. On the other side, Loui Eriksson played 61 games scoring only 10 goals and suffering two concussions.
The most recent awful move made by Chiarelli was sending Johnny Boychuk to the New York Islanders for a couple of second round draft picks. This was a terrible trade and was incredibly unpopular around Boston as Boychuk was both a fan and a locker room favorite. Boychuk may not have been the most offensively minded D-man in Boston, but he could easily shut down some of the top players in the league being a +31 in 2013 (3rd best defenseman in the NHL). To go along with his incredible plus/minus, Boychuk is one of the hardest and best hitters in the league and has one of the fastest shots, speculated to be over 100 mph by Bruins announcer Jack Edwards. The reason the Bruins got rid of Boychuk was to relieve some cap space in order to keep other core members of the team. However, with his $3.5 million per year contract, it does not open up as much cap space as trading other defenseman Zdeno Chara would have. Chara has a $7 million per year contract and is nearing the end of his career. However, trading one of the top defenseman to ever play in the NHL could have been a very risky move.
Although they would have lost their top D-man by trading Chara, the Bruins could easily have been a cup contending team without their current captain. They are not lacking leadership whatsoever; Bergeron could be promoted to Captain, Krejci and Kelly could stay Assistant Captains and players such as Boychuk, Campbell, and Seidenberg could easily be made into Assistant Captains, if needed. Chara would have also had much more value than Boychuk and could have been traded to a young team lacking in leadership and defensemen such as Edmonton or Florida. In return, the Bruins could have got a top line right wing such as Jordan Eberle (who is rumored to be traded soon) from Edmonton or could have had cap room to resign future Hall of Famer Jarome Iginla.
After Iginla’s departure this past offseason, the Bruins are left with no top line right wing and no one to play with Krejci and Lucic. Iginla was a great fit last year (30 goals) and Eberle would also have been a perfect fit (24 years old, twice 25+ goals). All the Bruins got in return for Boychuk was Philadelphia’s second round pick in 2015, the Islander’s 2016 second round pick, and a conditional third round pick in 2015 given to Boston if the Islanders trade Boychuk to another Eastern Conference team this year (not likely with how well he and his team have been doing so far). Meanwhile in New York, Boychuk already has 6 points in 6 games. If the Bruins don’t get a star player with one of those draft picks, this could easily make Chiarelli lose his position as GM.
At age 37, Chara will not be playing much longer. He is already a lot slower than previous years and nowhere near as good as he was just a few seasons ago. Yes, he may have had 17 goals last year but the Bruins need more defensive defenseman, not goal scoring defenseman. More importantly they need a 1st line right wing to score goals which they could have gotten in a Chara trade. They already have Krug and Hamilton on defense who can score. Also, if they kept Boychuk, he could have scored goals and his shot was accurate, hard, and got through to the net creating rebounds for other players to potentially score. He already has 2 goals and 4 assists in 6 games this year for New York, not to mention he is an incredible playoff performer. The Bruins have one of the deepest defensive cores in the NHL and could easily pull up people from Providence such as Warsofsky if they traded Chara and needed another defenseman. Sooner or later, Chara is going to lose value and not be worth anything at all. Boychuk would have had value for a lot longer being only 30 years old. Overall, Boychuk is a better and faster skater, he has just as hard of a shot and probably a more accurate one, as well as a lower cap hit, better hitting ability, can fight, and he doesn’t turn the puck over as much as the awkward skating Chara. Yes he might have a long reach but so does 6 foot 5 Dougie Hamilton who I believe will develop into one of the best defensemen in the league (only 20 years old now). The Bruins would most likely have no worries stopping goals without him having the 2nd lowest goals against average in the NHL last year and with a goalie like Tuukka in net. All in all, Chiarelli’s move to get rid of Boychuk was a terrible idea and the alternative of trading Chara, if necessary, would have been a much better option.
