The Boston Bruins began shaping their roster for the 2016-17 NHL season on Tuesday afternoon when they announced a four-year contract for defenseman Kevan Miller.
The contract will pay Miller, who would have been eligible for unrestricted free agency this summer without a new deal, a total of $10 million over the length of it. That comes out to a salary cap hit of $2.5 million per year.
This seems like it is a very risky -- and very questionable -- move.
The cap hit itself is probably about what you should expect for a player like Miller (he had 18 points in 71 games this past season and played more than 19 minutes per game), and if he hit the open market he probably would have received a similar deal. But just because somebody else would have done it does not mean the Bruins should have.
The four-year term is where the problem might come in down the line.
It is a long-term commitment for a player that has played more than 50 games in an NHL season just one time, and is at an age (he turns 29 in November) where he is not likely to get any better than he currently is.
On a contending team, Miller is probably best suited as a third-pairing defenseman. Is a third-pairing defenseman the type of player you really need to commit a four-year contract to if you are the Bruins at this point?
The biggest issue for the Bruins is what means for the makeup of their defense as a whole and what they can now do to make it better. Their blue line was by far their biggest weakness in 2015-16, and they now have a lot of money committed to the same players that made it a weakness. Between Miller's new deal, and the money that is still owed to Adam McQuaid (who will be entering the second-year of a four-year contract he signed last summer) and 35-year-old Dennis Seidenberg, they have $9.2 million in cap space committed to that trio for the next two full seasons. And that doesn't even get into Zdeno Chara who will be another year older and has already started to show signs of slowing down.
Individually, the contracts for players like McQuaid and Miller are not a major issue. But they quickly add up when you put them all together. With all of that cap space tied up, and all of those roster spots filled (they also have to sign defensemen Torey Krug and Joe Morrow as restricted free agents) it is going to take a lot more roster movement and some creativity to find a way to upgrade a unit that was probably the single biggest reason the team missed the playoffs for the second year in a row. It is not going to be easy.
