If Bergeron does decide to return for one more season, what would his deal look like?

• Player Overview
• What We Know
• Comparables
• Projection

Player Overview

Over the last two decades, Patrice Bergeron has put together a Hall of Fame career. He’s captured a Stanley Cup, a King Clancy Trophy, a Mark Messier Leadership Award, and this week, he earned his record sixth Selke Trophy.

Despite being 37 years old, Bergeron really hasn’t shown signs of slowing down and remains one of the greatest defensive forwards of all-time. He scored 27 goals and 58 points this season, helping the Bruins to their historic regular season success.

Considering it seemed up in the air as to whether he’d even return for this season though, his status for next year is uncertain at best, with retirement a very strong possibility.

At the same time, Bergeron would undoubtedly provide a massive boost for the Bruins if he did return. It’s for that reason I had him listed as a Top-50 Free Agent, and thus, a contract projection article is being released.

What We Know

• The Bruins are currently operating as though Patrice Bergeron 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.

Bergeron’s contract projection is much different than most others. Obviously, given the situation, we don’t even know if he’ll be back next year. If he is though, it’s basically a certainty it’ll be on a one-year deal.

One of the options would be to take a deal which has an identical cap hit and AAV.

Obviously, there’s a pretty massive range of projections on a regular one-year deal. Perhaps the best range would be around the $4.7M projections from Thornton (2018) and Stastny, which were right around Bergeron’s $5M AAV last season.

The other option though, which is much more likely, would be Bergeron taking a deal with performance bonuses once again. Often, the bonuses would be based on games played.

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 Bergeron’s deal on the far right.

If Bergeron wanted, he could certainly still get paid well elsewhere. At the same time, it seems almost certain that he’d only return to the Bruins and based on their cap situation, it makes a deal a bit more tricky. So while many of the projected cap hits would be between $2M and $4M, I’d probably expect it to actually come in lower, with more performance bonuses.

We saw Jarome Iginla’s 2013 deal absolutely loaded with bonuses, coming in at just a $1.8M cap hit but a $6M AAV. I’d expect Bergeron’s to be a similar format.

Last summer, Bergeron signed a deal with a $2.5M cap hit and $5M AAV. We could see the AAV remain pretty close, maybe dropping to around $4.5M as projected by the payment rate on Bergeron’s last deal. That said, to preserve cap flexibility, it wouldn’t be shocking to see Bergeron’s cap hit drop by quite a bit, perhaps to around the $1M to $1.5M range.

Projection

Given the Bruins’ lack of cap space, if Bergeron did return, it could be tricky to make a contract work.

While it would almost certainly be a one-year deal, the questions would be 1) how flexible is Bergeron on the amount and 2) how much of the contract comes from performance bonuses?

Obviously, once players get to Bergeron’s age, it’s often just a matter or priorities. If Bergeron is set on just trying to win, similar to what we saw with Jason Spezza’s final run with the Toronto Maple Leafs, he could end up just taking a league minimum deal.

But considering Bergeron did get a reasonable salary on his last deal, chances are, he’d still want to be paid. So while the actual one-year deal is hard to predict, here’s what it could look like: