What We Know

• The Bruins are currently operating as though David Krejci will retire and not be back next season, according to Bruins president Cam Neely.
• Boston will also be facing significant salary cap constraints.

Comparables

For more information on the stats/tables used below, including how the payment rate in projections is determined, visit the About the Site page.

As is the case with Bergeron’s projection, this is a unique article compared to most. If Krejci does return, we can be almost certain it’ll be on a one-year deal.

One of the options would be for Krejci to take a deal which has an identical cap hit and AAV, with some recent comparables below.

Projections for Krejci would have him anywhere from about $2M, up to $8.64M. For those who also read the Bergeron projection, the projections in the tables are exact same for both players, as Bergeron and Krejci had the same production mid point.

The more likely option though would be for Krejci is to take a deal including performance bonuses.

Below, we listed out some examples of players taking deals that carried a low cap hit but were very heavy on performance bonuses. Each player’s cap hit and AAV have been adjusted to an $83.5M cap in the ‘Adjusted’ columns, with the applicable projection for Krejci’s deal on the far right.

Last summer, Krejci’s deal carried a $1M cap hit, but a $3M AAV factoring in performance bonuses. While pretty much every comparable would have him making more, the reality is, he probably isn’t going to.

If Krejci was after money, he could absolutely get a bigger deal than what he had last year. However, we know Krejci wouldn’t leave the Bruins and is he was after money, he never would’ve left the NHL the first time to begin with. As a result, it’s highly unlikely he takes a pay raise if he returns.

Projection

If Krejci did return on a one-year deal, he’d end up taking less with the Bruins than he’d be able to get elsewhere.

The Bruins’ cap issues also can’t be overlooked. Again though, as I’ll typically try to note with players around Krejci’s age, it’s based on their priorities and we could even see Krejci take much less if he decided to return, regardless of price.

So the projection would come in the same as last year on cap hit, but slightly lower on AAV.

What I’d note about this is that typically when players have the same payment rate from the comparable projections, they’d have the same cap hit projected. However, I have Krejci coming in lower than Bergeron. While their production is very similar, Bergeron should no doubt be more of a priority for the Bruins. He’s the team’s captain, coming off a Selke win, also had the larger one-year deal last summer, which gives a baseline for a new deal.

So Krejci would be expected to have the lower deal than Bergeron, but again, these types of contracts are very difficult to predict and in this case, it’ll come down to how much the Bruins can pay, and how much of a discount Krejci would take.