B's Sigh David Krejci To 6 Year 43.5 Million Dollar Deal

Despite being in a pretty big cap pickle right now, the Bruins made a move with an eye toward the foreseeable future by locking up playmaking pivot David Krejci to a six year, $43.5M contract extension. The deal will carry a very reasonable $7.25M cap hit through ’20-’21 when the crafty center will still be only 34.

This means the Bs have their two top-flight centers locked up for the next seven years at a combined $13.75M hit. If Patrice Bergeron continues his play as a perennial Selke contender (and there’s frankly no reason to think he won’t) and Krejci keeps quietly performing as one of the league’s better playmakers, then this is money well spent for Peter Chiarelli and crew. I don’t care what line you call them or that Krejci has a slightly higher annual value (and something tells me they don’t care much either), I’m glad to have them locked up.

Krejci got a lot of shit after this year’s playoff and it was deserved. Four assists in 12 games isn’t going to cut it. But he did lead the league in playoff scoring in two of the three previous years when the Bruins made it to the Final both years; 49 points in 47 playoff games is still pretty impressive. I think last year was more an aberration (about 80% of the team sucked versus Montreal) than any indication of a downward trend in his game. He’s still a hell of a competitor that led the team in regular season scoring.

Of course, it’s the NHL and things can change overnight (see: Thornton, Joe or Seguin, Tyler). But you can do a hell of lot worse than these two guys manning your first two units for the next seven years.

Because it’s an extension, the deal doesn’t affect the Bs current situation at all—they’ll still need to move a body or bodies in order to re-sign Torey Krug and Reilly Smith. The Krejci deal was basically peanuts compared to PC’s next move.