Two Down One to Go

Well two of the players we got for Joe Thornton are gone, and it is expected that the third will soon follow (that is if anyone wants him)

The Bruins pulled the trigger on a trade, sending defenceman Brad Stuart, and forward Wayne Primeau to the Flames on Saturday for defenceman Andrew Ference and forward Chuck Kobasew.
Was this a good trade? Only time will tell, we got two young players, we now haev two players on the roster who are a plus 7, (how long they stay that way is another question) the next closest player to being a plus is Brian Bochenski who is a minus one.

Taking into account that Stuart is on his way back to San Jose come July first, and that Primeau is a third line center at best, who takes dumb penalties, this trade may not seem to bad. Ference however is small 5-10 / 196 for a defensman and Kobasew has been hurt. (which I thought meant he could not be traded.) Anyhoo we now have him, and maybe there was wording in the deal in respect to draft picks or other players if Kobasew could not play. He will likely be out another 2-3 weeks according to the Boston Globe.

Is this what we needed? Not in my opinion, we needed a goalie. With the free agent market loking thin on goalies, Stuart may have been our only hope to landing a number one backstop.
Chairelli did free up a nice chunk of cap space, as the trade off is worth 2.4 million in cap space. Put that together with what we have in space now and the Bruins are looking at 2 million worth of room right now and if the cap increases next year to the projected 47 million, we will have 5.1 million to play with in the free agent market. This does not include the 4 million worth for Zhamnov, so in total we could have almost ten million in cap space. That would put Boston in the front running for anyone who was looking to get paid big (4-5 million a year) now are there any free agents out there worth that? The only two listed in the TSN (Cannadian ESPN, not the sporting news) power rankings are Hasek 2.08 GAA and .908 save Pct. But he is OLD and not likely to come to Boston, as he is not in need of the money and may even call it a career (for the third time) The other is Ray Emery, who may just be worth going after. He has stolen the show from Martin Gerber (who is making 3.7 million this year and we all know Ottowa has little cap space.) Emery is only making $925K so we could wave three million at him and he should come running. Chairelli knows Emery well, as he was in the mix when Ottowa drafted him, he has taken a Free agent with him already, when Boston signed Chara (even though he "officially" had nothing to do with it) So is this Chairelli's master plan? Could be, he keeps talking about cap space and moving players for little or nothing in return, only to come back and say we now have more room to move financially. Only time will tell, in fact only about four months and three weeks until the frre agent market opens up.