Goodbye Chuck, BC Sucks and you'll be playing golf somewhere else next summer.
The Bruins ended an eventful (and very up and down) weekend with a trade that may be telling of things to come. In what this writer deems an obvious cap clearing move, the B's sent Kobasew to Minnesota for the rights to two players and a draft pick. With Kobasew a $2.3 million cap hit this year, the B's just went from $700k to $3 million (ammortize that to about $2.4 for the remainder of the year) in space under the cap. Remember, we're still being hit by 3 guys we are paying, but not getting the benefit of their sucktitude (Murray, Schaeffer and Eaves). What's this all mean?
Multiple sources of rumor and conjecture are spelling out the future that we'd all LOVE to see happen: the Bruins are clearing the way for a run at Ilya Kovalchuk. Let's face it, his best goal scoring season was in 05-06 playing alongside Marc Savard, so there's virtually no reason to argue with a trade run at a guy who's 26 and already has 300 career goals.
However, i'm advising cautious optimism. While i do believe this has been in the making since the Bruins began stiff arming Phil Kessel, it's far from a foregone conclusion that Atlanta is even going to trade their captain. I know from a source inside the Atlanta organization that they are very high on their young talent and with Ilya only 26, they'd have to consider throwing the kitchen sink at him in contract negotiations. The bigger question is Ilya himself, i.e. will he WANT to resign.
Think about all of that. It's not simple because the Bruins will have to dump other $ before this becomes a reality, too. I'll be back with further breakdown of trade possibilities and some cranky writing about the inconsistency of the play our boys put forth on their short southwestern roadtrip this weekend (3-o win in Dallas and 4-1 loss in the desert that is hockey purgatory). Oh, and Lucic was placed on long-term injured reserve. Fuck.
