As soon as they put the finishing touches on a statement win over the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Boston Bruins announced a contract extension for Pavel Zacha. The four-year deal will carry a cap hit of $4.75MM and keeps Zacha under contract through 2026-27.
Zacha, 25, was acquired from the New Jersey Devils in an offseason trade last summer and agreed to a one-year, $3.5MM deal as an RFA. That would have walked him right to unrestricted free agency at the end of the season, and after a great performance so far, earned a serious extension.
The defensive forward has fit in nicely for the stingy Bruins, adding 25 points in 41 games. That has him on pace to set a new career-high (his previous is just 36), though only five of them are goals.
His scoring talents have become secondary over the years though, as Zacha refined his defensive game more and more. He can now be deployed on any line, at any point in the game, and help tilt the ice in the Bruins favor.
While it is certainly no guarantee that continues, the Boston front office must believe he can be a core piece moving forward. The Bruins have a massive contract negotiation still pending with David Pastrnak, which will eat up a ton of cap space moving forward.
Luckily, there’s plenty of money coming off the books even with Zacha signed. Nick Foligno, Craig Smith, Tomas Nosek, Chris Wagner, Anton Stralman, and Connor Clifton are all pending UFAs, not to mention Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci who are going year-to-year at this point.
With Zacha in place, the team still has more than $20MM to work with as they try to rebuild the roster for next season.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images
Glad Zacha is having a good season after the trade – he’s timed his run well. I’m not sure this contract will age well as time goes on and his historical play resurfaces.
It’s not like the B’s have many options with Sweeney and Neely horrible drafts and a team that is on maybe it’s last legs with it’s two big core guys plus no word on a Pasta extension or let’s be real Marchand just had double hip replacement
Still 25 years old. The B’s get his best hockey years
So are you one of the people that say teams like Buff, Ana, LA, Col, car, dal, NYR, Mtl, etc… all draft better?
Now take a look at how many top 5, Top10 picks these teams have had in the past 8-9 yrs Sweeney has been GM.
Now if you want to complain he traded away top picks, fine, but then you are also saying you would rather he didn’t try to win it all each yr.
They really aren’t that good at drafting, regardless of where they are slotted. Outside of Pasta and Mcavoy, they’ve almost had a whole decade of draft day failures. And that doesn’t even include one of the all time blunders in the way they drafted in 2015.
Sign the lifers now 88 37
I would definitely like to see 37 play one more year.
Hrm. Zacha’s certainly played well. But handing him that kind of money means they’re REALLY betting on Pasta taking a huge hometown discount.
Because the money’s not going to be there in the carload lots predicted. Boston needs to REPLACE the production of those guys. Foligno’s having a good year, and middle-six forwards don’t come for free. Clifton’s having a good year, and they’re going to have to stump up to sign him. Bergeron and Krejci are going to hit $4.5m in performance bonuses which will come as cap hits.