Yesterday, via Zoom call, Bruins defenseman and pending unrestricted free agent Torey Krug expressed to the media that he hopes he hasn’t played his final game as a Bruin. Krug has spent his entire career in Boston and has 337 points in 523 games as a left-shot defenseman (67 goals, 270 assists). He appeared to be in great positioning again this year in Boston to win his first Stanley Cup, as the Bruins held the best record in hockey at 44-14-12 and were the only team to reach 100 regular-season points before the stoppage.

Despite being somewhat banged up with injuries, Torey Krug had another solid regular season in Boston, with nine goals and forty assists for forty-nine points in sixty-one games. He even had a solid penalty taken/drawn ratio at 10:11, which for a defenseman is extremely impressive. His giveaway/takeaway ratio wasn’t as impressive with a 48:22 and was one of eight Bruins players out of twenty-three that had a negative +/- number (-4). He finished 2019-20 with a -1.44 score, which is acceptable given he’s a defenseman that plays 20+ minutes a night. Krug has always been an impressive AB defenseman, as he is among a rare group that has played seven years in the league and have a positive career AB score to show for it (+0.31). Krug is obviously a very talented hockey player, and any team would be lucky to have him.

We ran Krug’s numbers through our arbitration analyzer to determine what his next deal could look like and found an appropriate comparison to be Minnesota’s Ryan Suter. Suter signed his massive 13-year, $98 million contract on July 4^th,2012 with his friend and new teammate Zach Parise at the same time, which completely shocked the hockey world. While Krug’s decision won’t be as league altering, we think he could get around Suter’s $7.538 million AAV, perhaps in the range of $7.5-$8 million.

This being said, however, Krug has stated to members of the media before that he would be willing to take less money to re-sign in Boston as long as they want him. If that’s the case, the Bruins have $24 million in cap space to re-sign him, Zdeno Chara if he wants to keep playing, HFFA darling Jake DeBrusk, quality goaltender Jaroslav Halak, and fellow defenseman Matt Grzelcyk. We will see what magic 2019 GM of the Year Don Sweeny can pull off here, as the Bruins have also been rumored to be interested in Taylor Hall. We also wrote an article projecting the contract of Hall, who is also a pending unrestricted free agent at the conclusion of the 2019-20 NHL season, and you can read that as well here. More to come, as we still wait in limbo to see if the NHL will resume play or not.