Don Sweeney has had a busy two weeks, but the deals he and the Bruins front office have made set up the team to win now and build toward the future.
The general manager’s latest moves came Thursday, when Boston traded for Tyler Bertuzzi from the Detroit Red Wings for two draft picks. David Pastrnak signed an eight-year extension the same day as the Black and Gold made a strong statement to the rest of the NHL.
Last week’s trade for Dmitry Orlov and Garnet Hathaway were graded well by experts, and they have paid off in a short amount of time. Thursday’s deal for Bertuzzi was no different.
ESPN gave Boston a B-plus for the deal. They noted the multiple injuries Bertuzzi has dealt with this season that have limited him to 29 games. But the 28-year-old winger was viewed as an asset, and he will be after Taylor Hall was placed on long-term injured reserve and Nick Foligno was placed on injured reserve.
“Is this overkill?” ESPN wrote. “At some point it’s worth asking whether a team that has steamrolled everybody in the league — literally: They’re the first squad to beat all 31 teams at least once in a single season — needed to ‘tinker’ as much as they have.”
The Athletic’s Corey Pronman gave a similar grade, but Dom Luszczyszyn and Sean Gentille gave the Bruins an A for the trade deal, and the trio also viewed the transaction as a positive one for the Red Wings.
“What I like most about the move, I think, is that it’s both reactionary and utterly correct,” Gentille wrote. “Since he traded for Dmitry Orlov and Garnet Hathaway (an A, by the way), Sweeney has watched the Maple Leafs overhaul their defense, the Rangers add Patrick Kane and the Lightning ominously clear salary space. So he acted. How about a 30-goal scorer? Does that work? Alrighty then. Bravo.”
Toronto, New York and Tampa Bay has helped make the pre-trade deadline period a historic one. There have been 41 trades over the past two weeks prior to Friday’s deadline. The most amount of trades during that span was 20 in the past 10 years, according to Cap Friendly.
The Pastrnak deal also earned an A from The Athletic’s Luszczyszyn and Shayna Goldman. The contract extension made him the highest-paid player in Bruins history, and he will be the sixth-highest earner in the NHL in terms of average annual value.
“It’s a contract the Bruins can afford; they really only have two of this magnitude, and each belongs to one of the best at their position between Pastrnak and Charlie McAvoy on defense,” Goldman wrote. “And it’s one that should bring positive value throughout considering his age, ceiling, and future cap growth in the later years. That would be true even if he signed for more. Even if in some universe it became a slight overpayment, that’s the cost of doing business and it’s still the right way to structure a team’s payroll. The best players deserve the biggest contracts, and the rest of the roster should be constructed around that — never the other way around.”
Bertuzzi will not play in Thursday’s game against the Buffalo Sabres while he travels to Boston, but you can catch Pastrnak in his first game after his extension on NESN with pregame starting at 6 p.m. ET and puck drop scheduled at 7 p.m.
