Last month, Bruins forward Peter Cehlarik voiced his frustration with head coach Bruce Cassidy in an interview with TA3 in his native Slovakia and indicated that he was looking for a change of scenery. That change doesn’t appear to be coming with another NHL team though. Instead, he appears to be heading overseas. His agent Louis Leitch told Mattias Persson of HockeyNews.se last week that he was fielding interest from teams in Russia, Sweden, and Switzerland. It appears he’ll be heading to the latter of the three countries as a report from Flavio Viglezio of Corriere Del Ticino in Switzerland has the 24-year-old close to signing with HC Lugano of the Swiss NLA.
After a strong rookie AHL season in 2016-17 that also saw him get into 11 games with Boston, it looked as if Cehlarik was going to be a part of their future core. However, he hasn’t progressed much since then and wound up clearing waivers this season. He played in 48 games with AHL Providence this year and picked up a respectable 16 goals and 21 assists while adding an assist in three contests with the big club.
As a restricted free agent with arbitration eligibility this offseason, the Bruins can retain his NHL rights by issuing him a qualifying offer. However, with Cehlarik expressing his desire to leave on top of what appears to be stagnated development, they could also just decide to cut bait altogether by non-tendering him later this offseason.
So the kid needs change of scenery that’s good let him play over seas for one or two years light it up on the stats sheet. Bruins will trade him for a player they need for a cup run and then he will probably fall apart at the NHL level for another team… It smells like alot of these euros that come over and think oh we are good enough to make the big team… No u are not…..