Huge If True: What should Bruins do with Loui Eriksson?

[Breaking down the plausibility of the week's biggest rumor.]

The Rumor

As noted at the Winter Classic, the Bruins are facing a pretty major decision: Do they keep Loui Eriksson or not?

This is the kind of issue that should weigh heavily on GMs, because if the job is all about maximizing the value of each dollar spent, guys heading into their early 30s and having borderline career years should set off a lot of sirens and red flags.

So it is no real surprise that we've apparently only just learned, courtesy of Darren Dreger, that the Bruins and Eriksson's camp have only just now started some preliminary negotiations about a potential extension.

Said Dreger on Tuesday night's Insider Trading:

“You're talking about a significant deal here in the neighborhood of five or six years, that would be the request from the player’s perspective, and probably north of $6 million per year.”

Again, Don Sweeney has to be careful here, because that's a decent-sized chunk of money to give to a guy for what should be at least a few of his post-30 decline years. Five or six years is a long time in that regard, and you often see the wheels just fall off guys who get into the 34-plus area. Would Eriksson be one of those guys? I'd tend to doubt it, because it's not like he plays a speed game or has ever been particularly reliant upon his scoring talent to drive his value.

But with that said, the Bruins also have to re-sign everyone in their D corps but Adam McQuaid, Dennis Seidenberg and Zdeno Chara, plus a few more forwards. And they already have more than $47 million committed to just 12 players for next season. The question is whether they push all in for one last go of things while Chara is still a useful top-pairing D, and get very top-heavy for the next few years while hoping for meaningful contributions from guys on entry-level deals.

Should they decide they'd rather spread the money around on other players and look for a plug-and-play replacement for Eriksson, Dreger says they may have a backup plan:

“If the Bruins don’t have the stomach for that then maybe they look at the Nashville Predators, or another Western Conference team that would have an interest in a trade. But the Bruins need to find out where they stand in negotiations first.”

So we now have our first official Loui Eriksson trade rumor, with a specific partner in mind.

The next morning, Joe Haggerty — who once inexplicably called Eriksson a third-line forward and may therefore not be the best judge of quality in these areas — added on Boston's Toucher and Rich morning show that:

“Obviously the Bruins want a young defenseman, that can be under their control for a while, a future top-pairing guy in the making. One of these talented young D from another team that they can groom into a top guy and maybe even an heir apparent to Zdeno Chara.”

But really, like, who doesn't this describe?

Who's Going Where?

So let's start with what we have so far: The Bruins are going to at least kick the tires on Eriksson, but the player's representation wants something in the high-$5 million and high-$6 million range, depending upon the term, according to WEEI.com's DJ Bean. That obviously lines up with what Dreger noted.

What Dreger did not note but Bean did, however, is that Eriksson has a partial no-trade and can veto any deals that would send him to one of 14 teams.

If the Bruins decide the asking price is too high — and you can never tell with Sweeney, because he thought the asking price on Dougie Hamilton was too high — then trading Eriksson becomes a necessity. Teams are learning more and more often these days that it's just good asset management to make a trade and hope you can find a reasonable replacement for his abilities either in that same swap or elsewhere on the trade market.

This isn't a situation where the Bruins can push all-in, hoping for a Stanley Cup and then saying, “If we lose him this summer, we lose him.” This isn't a team all that capable of meaningfully competing for such a bauble, so if re-signing him is a no, then the priority immediately shifts to finding a buyer.

Which is where the Predators theoretically come in.

In the above-linked interview, Haggerty also floats the idea that St. Louis might be a reasonable landing spot for Eriksson if things go south, but that feels an awful lot like connecting the dots between the recent Kevin Shattenkirk trade rumors, Dreger's vague “other teams” claim and an area of clear need.

The Bruins' defense is trash as currently constituted, and maybe you say St. Louis is up for a player-for-player deal. Don't see why they would be given that Eriksson would be a straight-up rental and Shattenkirk has a year left on a sweetheart of a deal. Would Boston further sweeten the pot, then? Tough to say.

In 30 Thoughts this week, Elliotte Friedman floated the idea that the Ducks' blue line is about to get very congested when Cam Fowler comes back in another few weeks. But is Boston the most reasonable trade target there when the Jonathan Drouin saga has been more closely linked here in the last week?

You might also be able to make the argument that the Canucks might want some offensive help. But given the quality of that team's blue line and the general tightness of the Pacific Division, and the sort of obvious soft rebuild that's going on there, do they give up someone useful to get a guy they almost certainly lose this summer? I dunno.

The Implications

Lots of teams need help up front, a few of them have the horses to get Boston into a mutually beneficial trade, but Eriksson as the trade target, at this point, seems a little dim.

Part of the problem, it seems to me, is that if you give Eriksson, say, $6.75 million for five years — which I think is pretty reasonable — is that he approaches Patrice Bergeron's cap hit of $6.875 million. People will be very upset about what this means symbolically. Boston fans, and perhaps even front-office types, generally seem to feel that market value for a player is some sort of overpayment, and if we assume a cap ceiling of $73 million next year (not guaranteed thanks to how badly things are going with the loonie), that's about 9.25 percent of the Bruins' total cap number.

Is Eriksson that good? I'd say yes. But I'd rather have him at $5.95 or something like that for six than almost a million more than that for five. Again, the things he does well don't usually just disappear with age.

And if you can't re-sign him, then the trade becomes necessity. I just don't see where the Bruins get a comparable talent over which they have any sort of long-term control without throwing something else in. The question, then, becomes what the second or third piece is, and how valuable they see the return player being.

Fortunately for Sweeney, he has some toys to play with. Boston has as many as four picks in the first two rounds in the upcoming draft, as it stands right now. That includes their own first, San Jose's first, Brooklyn's second, and maybe Edmonton's second (the Oilers get to choose whether it's this year or next, but you'd have to think they'll pick the latter given their place in the standings). They can therefore throw one of those picks into a trade and maybe get something better back. That's kind of why you have them even as you're trying to maybe go through a soft rebuild, right?

As for the rumored suitors for Eriksson: Every team in the league, let alone the Western Conference, can use him. Finding the trade partner if you have to is where things get tricky.

The reason Nashville isn't winning these days ain't the lack of offense, gang; Pekka Rinne couldn't stop traffic by lying down in a crosswalk right now (by my math he's cost the team about five or six standings points this season), and while the trade for Ryan Johansen was wise, renting Loui Eriksson would not address the team's biggest problem and would likely also render their position of greatest strength (defense) a lot less impressive.

St. Louis could use the help, sure. If Shattenkirk could be had for Eriksson and, say, a first-rounder, I think that benefits everyone. They're a budget team, though, and they cannot possibly think they're a Loui Eriksson away from being legit contenders in the Central, never mind the West, never mind the league. Especially if they bounce Shattenkirk in the equation.

As for Anaheim, it's tough to say what happens since they're already content to stuff Simon Despres in the AHL as it is. Don't see where they have much juice to make a D trade look appealing to Boston without giving up something more substantial, even if the Bruins are just hoping to salvage something.

Fortunately, everyone has another five weeks or so to figure something out.

This Is So Huge, If True: Is It True?

On a B.S. detector scale of 1-5, with one being the most reasonable and 5 being the least:

In terms of Boston's plan here, it's clear that their only option if they feel they can't re-sign Eriksson is to trade him. However, the rumored trade partners as it stands right now are Nashville, maybe St. Louis, and the entire rest of the Western Conference.

For this reason, the rumor here gets:

No doubt the Bruins would like to trade Eriksson if they can't keep him at what they feel is a reasonable price point, and given that the number has been pretty clearly verified by two separate sources, we almost certainly know what's being sought. There's also no doubt they would prefer to keep him away from potential opponents in the Eastern Conference playoffs.

But beyond that this is some pretty broad speculation by all involved. “Eriksson to one of five or six teams if both x and y, don't happen,” isn't much to go on.

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

(All statistics via War On Ice unless otherwise noted.)