Relax Bs Nation.  Even though you thought (“teach me how to”) Dougie Hamilton was the second coming, he has been shipped to Calgary and is now a distant part of the collective, yet fading, lore of the infamous Kessel for Seguin, Hamilton, Eriksson and a first and two seconds epic saga.  We have analyzed high round picks with respect to the AB score that make our top 100 and find that over 60% of them turn out to be positive AB players and do so relatively quickly.   The three guys the Bruins grabbed in return may turn out to be far better than Hamilton overall.  Time will tell.  If you want to be upset about something, keep waving the pitchforks over the Eriksson deal.

As for Hamilton, he was an unspectacular underperformer at the bottom of the NHL with a -3.40 AB. Bruins brass obviously thought he would not soon become someone they could rely upon to produce a positive goal margin.  By shipping him to Calgary, the Bruins upped their chances of finding a future stud who could be.  In fact if you consider the move in the hypercritical sense, Hamilton cost the Bruins over 3 goals this year mostly because he took far more penalties than he drew.  This means he was either outhustled, outmuscled, clueless or a touch of all three.  The Bruins missed the playoffs by two points.  Was Hamilton’s mere presence the factor that cost the Bruins a playoff spot?  OK, OK, that may be a little much to hang on Mr. Hamilton since he had a lot of help from the equally futile Adam McQuaid and Brett Connolly.  These three players combined were essentially the reason the Bruins finished with an overall slightly negative team AB.

For those of you who do not know, all teams with a positive AB made the playoffs in 2015, except Los Angeles.  Therefore any step for teams to alleviate “problem children” is a step in the right direction and the team with the better AB won every first round playoff series and three of four second round matchups.  The Bruins may have received the memo (either that or they have become avid readers of hockeyfreeforall.com, who knows?).

On the Calgary side, they had an excellent team AB of +13.11 in 2015.  As such, they can afford to gamble with Hamilton and be patient while he attempts to rectify his growing pains.  Moreover, Calgary can now upgrade from Ladislav Smid, who was atrocious five on five on an otherwise excellent even strength team.  So the Flames essentially swap liabilities, gain potential upside, but gave away what likely would have been a positive AB player within three years and two other players that will certainly be developed down on the farm.  And we thought Brian Burke was a disciple of AB?  On second thought, he wasn’t with Toronto…..so there’s that.

To reiterate, take a chill pill Bruins fans.  The Bruins solidly upgraded by adding through subtraction.  Even if this is not apparent to you yet, it is OK.  We are here to help 24/7 (and all we ask in return is that you follow us on twitter).