BOSTON – The Bruins made a handful of veteran signings during the opening day of free agency as general manager Don Sweeney inked forwards Milan Lucic, James van Riemsdyk, Morgan Geekie, and Patrick Brown, and defenseman Kevin Shattenkirk to contracts on Saturday afternoon.
“I don’t think you ever feel comfortable with where you sit in July, I don’t think you fully build your team out. You have a lot of if, ands, or buts, but with the congestion of the marketplace as it relates to the cap and where we were, I think we did a lot of the things that we set out to do in addressing the depth overall of our club,” Sweeney said from Warrior Ice Arena.
“We have plenty of opportunity for younger kids to come in and take their place if they earn it, but we’ve also complemented the group with players we felt we needed to fill some holes and address some needs.”
Sweeney said that the goal was to “remain a competitive group” next season despite the inevitable changeover that was expected to come this summer due to the club’s constraints with the salary cap.
“I think I was pretty honest that we weren’t going to be the same team,” he said. “We had an incredible amount of depth and we felt that we put together a good team, but we fell woefully short in the playoffs with what our goals were. We know we’re a competitive group and we want to remain a competitive group and with an eye towards the future. We didn’t really encumber ourselves too badly from a standpoint of contracts.”
Contract: One year, $1 million average annual value, plus $500,000 in performance bonuses
There isn’t much that Bruins fans don’t know about this guy.
The hulking left-winger spent his first eight seasons with the Black & Gold, helping the club to the playoffs in seven of those campaigns and to a Stanley Cup championship in 2011. He was traded to Los Angeles in June 2015 where he spent one season, before moving on to play three years in Edmonton and the last four in Calgary.
“I feel like I’m coming home,” said Lucic “I’m coming back for the right reasons. I think I’m coming back to help this team continue to progress and chase a championship. I’m really confident in my abilities to help this team do that.
“I’ve thought about this moment for the last seven years. I’ve been thinking about what it would be like to put on the Spoked-B, Black and Gold again. That’s why I’m so grateful for this opportunity.”
Lucic was donning a fresh Bruins flat brim hat during his virtual media availability, a cap that Sweeney said the winger was eager to show off.
“There’s been a little bit of social buzz out there about Looch,” Sweeney said with a chuckle. “Some of it has certainly been driven from Looch…at 12:01 he sent me a picture of himself in a Bruins hat that he honestly went to the store and bought himself.”
Lucic has compiled 233 goals and 584 points in 1,173 career contests and has played at least 80 games seven times, including three full 82-game campaigns.
“I just feel like bringing Looch back to Boston was the right thing to do for all the reasons,” added Sweeney. “He feels like he has a lot of juice left and we feel he can provide a real jolt of both enthusiasm and bite to our lineup…he can probably create a little bit of space if somebody is breathing down [David Pastrnak’s] neck, so it’s a thing we’ve missed and in a perfect world he never would have left, but those decisions were made and now we bring him back home and we’re happy about it.”
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