Bruins and Wheeler Accept Arbitration

The Bruins have decided to accept an arbitrators ruling by signing Blake Wheeler to the decision of 1-year at $2.2 million. Based on his 2010 numbers, 38 points in 82 games, some comparisons could have been made to Nikolai Kulemin, who is in the same age bracket, scored less points and makes a little more money. Not a bad deal for Wheeler, but could be a thorn in the side of Bruins management and the salary cap ceiling.

Wheeler's numbers were not too bad, as he ranked 203rd in pool scoring, 145th among forwards in 2010, which should make him a reasonable pick for the pools this year, possibly even getting a few boosts by theories that he might break out a little more.  He is a year older and possibly a year wiser, so there is good reason to think he could take the scoring up a notch or two.

Forwards	Defense	Goalies
Nathan Horton	Zdeno Chara	Tuukka Rask
Patrice Bergeron	Dennis Seidenberg	Tim Thomas
David Krejci	Johnny Boychuk
Mark Recchi	Matt Hunwick
Blake Wheeler	Andrew Ference
Marco Sturm	Mark Stuart
Michael Ryder
Marc Savard
Dan Paille
Milan Lucic
Gregory Campbell
Shawn Thornton

Before you go and make too many decisions now about the Bruins, you will have to pay close attention to who is going to play with who in the 2011 season, because there is plenty of flexibility as to who some of these new faces will line-up with and what kind of performance bonuses you may give to potential chemistry.

Then, there is the ever-present issue of the salary cap and it's higher ceiling, which doesn't seem to stop some teams from making moves. The Bruins, with this signing, move up to number two among all teams and the tables I have filled in with their current salary cap number, which now stands at $62.2 million, with 20 players signed on, 2 buyouts and a bonus penalty from last season all tacked on.  This means the Bruins will have to start looking at ways to move some cap hits around and get the math to work out correctly.