Bruins defenseman Zdeno Chara will be in the final year of his contract next season but despite being 40, he suggested to Don Brennan of the Ottawa Sun that retirement may not be on the horizon for a while yet. That said, he won’t go as far as putting a number on how long he would like to play until like pending Florida unrestricted free agent Jaromir Jagr did when he claimed he’d like to play until he’s 50.
Chara has been leaned on heavily this postseason with Boston being hit hard with the injury bug on the back end with Brandon Carlo, Torey Krug, Adam McQuaid, and Colin Miller all at least missing some time. As a result, he leads the team in ice time, averaging over 29 minutes per game.
Regardless of his future plans, the Bruins will get some cap relief on Chara’s contract for next season as his cap hit drops from just over $6.9MM to $4MM. This comes as a result of the rule that was instituted following the voided New Jersey deal to former winger Ilya Kovalchuk that made it that players over 40 will carry the same cap hit as their salary for that season. The rule was designed to help curtail heavily front-loaded deals with cheaper years tacked on at the end to artificially lower the cap hit and Boston will benefit from the drop in 2017-18.
Elsewhere in the East:
- The Lightning have yet to really open up talks with pending restricted free agent forwards Tyler Johnson and Jonathan Drouin, reports Joe Smith of the Tampa Bay Times in a reader mailbag. He notes that both would be very intriguing trade chips if GM Steve Yzerman looks to make a deal for the top four defender they’ve been trying to acquire for a while now and that making a trade will be the most likely outcome. Smith also suggests that the Blues, Ducks, Predators, and Wild (ones that have several quality young and controllable options) may be teams that Tampa Bay targets in a move.
- Capitals defenseman Karl Alzner is improving in his recovery from the upper body injury that has caused him to miss the last three games, head coach Barry Trotz told reporters today. Fellow rearguard Nate Schmidt has taken his place in the lineup and has fared relatively well which makes it a bit more difficult to figure out who should come out if Alzner is ready to return on Sunday night. Isabelle Khurshudyan of the Washington Post opines the Caps should consider dressing seven blueliners and have winger Brett Connolly sit instead. That would allow them to ease Alzner back in while Connolly has hardly seen the ice in the past two games, logging 4:26 and 6:12 in Games Four and Five respectively.