Bruins Re-Sign Boychuk

It's becoming increasingly popular for a lot of teams to take their potential unrestricted free agents off the market early, which is now the case for Johnny Boychuk, re-signing with the Boston Bruins, before becoming a Group VI free agent on July 1st. Boychuk signed a new 2-year deal worth $3.75 million, staying with a Bruins team that is looking to make some noise in the 2011 season.

Boychuk had a decent 2010 season, scoring 5 goals and adding 10 assists in 51 games with the Bruins, which doesn't look great on paper, but in a deep hockey pool, he may have been a player added midway through the season. His 15 points ranked him 119th among all defenders, which would put him near the bottom of a 30-team draft, but he did miss some games, gained some valuable experience in the playoffs and might be a decent defender with more minutes, now that Dennis Wideman is in Florida. I would peg Boychuk as one to watch.

Forwards	Defense	Goalies
Nathan Horton	Zdeno Chara	Tuukka Rask
Patrice Bergeron	Dennis Seidenberg	Tim Thomas
David Krejci	Johnny Boychuk
Marco Sturm	Matt Hunwick
Michael Ryder	Andrew Ference
Marc Savard
Milan Lucic
Shawn Thornton

I think it is rather safe to say that this isn't going to be the same looking Bruins team that we saw make the playoffs and then lose in the second round in dramatic fashion.  No, the addition of Nathan Horton immediately changes that look and there is word that the Bruins are not done yet.

As for the salary cap, the Bruins are still rather high up, in terms of numbers, having 15 players on their table above for the approximate annual cap hit of $51.7 million, not including any non-player hits (buyouts and such).  That is a fairly high total, ranking 4th in the league at the time of this post, but you can see that they have a pretty good core of players signed, including their top forwards, five out of a top six and both goalies, so the remaining eight players don't have to be expensive for this team to work.


Now, as the rumour mill has it, the Bruins are not even close to being done with their movements, with Marc Savard and Tim Thomas possibly on the block, but if they were to stay the course, they should be in pretty good shape.  There is no reason to panic in Boston and there is a good chance that they might be better for fantasy players in 2011.  Don't overdo any projections with the Bruins, but you might be able to touch up some of their numbers.