Spooner & Bruins Settle

The Boston Bruins and forward Ryan Spooner avoided their arbitration hearing as well this week, agreeing to a new 1-year, $2.825 million deal for the 2018 season.  The hearing was set to go later on in the day on Wednesday, but like most arbitration filings, they have been settled before the hearing or the verdict.

In 78 games with the Bruins last season, the 25-year old scored 11 goals and 39 points, which was good enough for 206th overall and 147th among all forwards.

If all goes well in camp, you would have to think that Spooner would be reunited with both David Krejci and David Backes, his main linemates in the 2017 season, trying to recapture his numbers in the 2016 season, where he had career highs in goals and in points, 13 and 49, respectively.

The Bruins could do with a little more offense to help bolster their club and provide them a little bit more strength, once they hit playoff time and Spooner's drop in production between seasons needs to be remedied to help that happen.

Forwards	Cap	Defense	Cap	Goalies	Cap
David Krejci	7.250	Torey Krug	5.250	Tuukka Rask	7.000
Patrice Bergeron	6.875	Zdeno Chara	4.000	Anton Khudobin	1.200
Brad Marchand	6.125	Adam McQuaid	2.750
David Backes	6.000	Kevan Miller	2.500
Matt Beleskey	3.800	Charles McAvoy	0.917
Ryan Spooner	2.825	Brandon Carlo	0.789
Jakob Forsbacka Karlsson	0.917	Paul Postma	0.725
Riley Nash	0.900
Jake DeBrusk	0.863
Sean Kuraly	0.809
Frank Vatrano	0.793
Tim Schaller	0.775
Peter Cehlarik	0.743
Noel Acciari	0.725

The Bruins have a number of bubble players on their current projected roster and still have $7.7 million in unused space after these 23 players are accounted for, plus $2.7 million in buyouts on the books.  The last big piece of the puzzle this season is David Pastrnak, who may require a good portion of that $7.7 million in remaining space, but I couldn't quite see him getting paid more than Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand quite yet.