NHL salary cap puts Bruins, Don Sweeney in precarious position for 2023-24 season

BOSTON -- As expected, the NHL salary cap is only going up by $1 million. It's not good news for the Boston Bruins.

After taking an all-in approach last year and getting zero playoff series win to show for it, general manager Don Sweeney and the Boston front office is going to have to work overtime this summer in order to try to roster a competitive team next season. Coming off a historic regular-season performance last year, that may sound like hyperbole. But consider the specifics.

The salary cap will be $83.5 million for the 2023-24 season. Per CapFriendly, the Bruins currently have less than $5 million in cap space. The exact number is $4.9375 million.

The Bruins currently have seven forwards under contract for the current season: David Pastrnak, Brad Marchand, Taylor Hall, Charlie Coyle, Pavel Zacha, Jake DeBrusk, and A.J. Greer. That's two lines (call it Marchand-Zacha-Pastrnak and Hall-Coyle-DeBrusk) with a fourth-liner to spare. 

The Bruins are well-stocked defensively, with seven players under contract for the coming season. That includes stars Charlie McAvoy and Hampus Lindholm, along with Brandon Carlo, Matt Gzelcyk, Derek Forbort, Mike Reilly, and Jakub Zboril.

In net, the Bruins have Linus Ullmark under contract. Jeremy Swayman is a restricted free agent and is due a large pay bump from the $1.05 million cap hit he carried over the past three seasons. The team does have minor leaguer Brandon Bussi signed under a new deal, too.

Aside from Swayman, the Bruins have restricted free agents in Trent Frederic and Jakub Lauko. Frederic carried a $925,000 cap hit last year, and Lauko's was $764,000. Both are due for moderate raises -- though Frederic's 17 goals may allow him to push the boundaries of "moderate" -- that should fit within the Bruins' salary structure.

But still, with less than $5 million in cap space, the Bruins are obviously in some trouble.

On the one hand, players like Reilly and Forbort make sense as potential trade candidates, as moving them could free up $6 million. Grzelcyk's $3.6875 cap hit could also come off the books with a trade, and all three of those D-men are pending UFAs following the next season. With Mason Lohrei potentially ready to contribute at the NHL level next year, there's at least one low-cost option to fill a slot on the blue line.

Elsewhere, despite a long-term commitment to Brando Carlo, the Bruins may not mind shedding his $4.1 million cap hit, now that Lindholm and McAvoy are both signed for the long term.

At the same time, teams know the Bruins' salary cap situation, and they know that the Bruins will be negotiating from a point of desperation. So the best the Bruins can likely hope to do with some of these deals is to shed salary. Acquiring a player or two who could contribute as a top-nine forward will be difficult if not impossible, given the circumstances.

Not helping matters: The Bruins don't have a first-round or second-round pick this year, so the hope of drafting a player who can contribute immediately would seemingly be quite low. (It doesn't help that they lack picks in the first three rounds of next year's draft, too, meaning they don't have much to offer if they want to trade for a low-cost forward.)

Also not helping the situation is the $4.5 million counting against the cap from David Krejci's and Patrice Bergeron's contracts last season. The Bruins were in a similar cap crunch a year ago, but Sweeney fit the two veteran centermen into the mix by pushing off bonus money into the 2023-24 salary cap. Now, the Bruins have that $4.5 million counting against their cap, and they have neither player under contract. 

If Bergeron decides to play a 20th season for the Bruins, perhaps it would be on a similar deal to last year. But even that $2.5 million cap hit tightens things even more for a team that's living on the razor's edge. 

The team reportedly wants to sign Tyler Bertuzzi, for whom they traded a first-round pick and a fourth-round pick to acquire, to a new deal. But he's due for a raise from his $4.5 million cap hit a year ago, so signing him may not be feasible.

The Bruins also traded a first-round pick, a second-round pick and a third-round pick in order to acquire defenseman Dmitry Orlov and forward Garnet Hathaway last season. Both of those players are now UFAs, with Orlov coming off a contract that paid him $5.1 million per year. Hathaway made $1.5 million last year. Both are due to make more money, which -- again -- may not fit into the scope of what the Bruins can accomplish.

For Sweeney, navigating last year's salary cap situation was difficult and required some creativity. Navigating this year's cap situation presents an even bigger challenge, as the team needs five NHL-caliber forwards to join a team with championship aspirations and currently has less than $5 million to get them.

If Sweeney manages to artfully play this game of salary cap Jenga while maintaining a roster that can compete for a division crown and realistically vie for a Stanley Cup, then it will be a masterful bit of maneuvering that should lead to some opportunities for the Harvard grad to deliver a MasterClass or two. If it doesn't work out and the Bruins go from record-setting season to scrapping for a playoff spot, then the sting of this past season's playoff flop and missed opportunity will resound even longer and deeper than initially imagined.