Could be worse...Hamilton Traded

[DraftSmart33]

Breaking News....Dougie Hamilton Traded to Calgary for a 1(#14) and two 2nd round picks........

WTH are the Bruins thinking?

[PhoSita]

Maybe they're gonna tank.  The salary cap is a major problem for them.  Retooling that team will probably take more than one off-season to complete.

[Roy H.]

Wow. I thought the Bs would build a perennial contender around Seguin and Hamilton. What a waste.

[kozlodoev]

Breaking News....Dougie Hamilton Traded to Calgary for a 1(#14) and two 2nd round picks........

WTH are the Bruins thinking?

I've got two words for you, my friend: Cap. Space. That's why they also sent Soderberg's rights out of town for chump change.

That, and apparently noone wants Lucic, I'm guessing.

[DraftSmart33]

Yeah....Unfortunately you don't rebuild trading away your 21 year old stud defensemen.....

I would have rather built around Hamilton and Subban than traded Hamilton.....Boston always eats their young.

[DraftSmart33]

It think there are other options to clear space than trade your youth away...The Bruins have a bad track record with young players.

[max215]

Bruins- worst run franchise in all of sports. The Seguin and Hamilton trades are embarrassing.

[dreamgreen]

Wow. I thought the Bs would build a perennial contender around Seguin and Hamilton. What a waste.

Yea me too. To bad Seguin was so young and wanted to party all the time.

[rocknrollforyoursoul]

I guess I don't understand the Bruins' cap situation, and maybe the general NHL cap system. How can a really good team like Chicago be loaded with high-end talent while (I'm presuming) staying under the cap, while a Boston team with no bonafide stars is CONSTANTLY dealing players "because of their cap situation"? The Bruins now have an aging defensive corp and no fearsome offensive players.

[Roy H.]

Lucic traded, too.  Bruins are getting a 1st, a goalie, and a prospect, and are picking up a chunk of his salary.

[boscel33]

Wow. I thought the Bs would build a perennial contender around Seguin and Hamilton. What a waste.

Amen!

How many teams would love to have the roster we had just a couple of years ago, prior to Seguin being dealt.  This is on the coach.  If you're given sports cars, turn them loose.  Not all players are the plodding defensive type that Julien needs to have to play his style of hockey. 

[Vermont Green]

Wow, hockey talk on CelticsBlog.  I love Hockey, actually still play regularly with a light-weight, try-to-not-hurt-anyone group.  Basketball is much more fun to follow and obsess over though (not sure why).

Hockey is more like football than basketball in that individual stars are less impactful.  The Bruins philosophy has been depth over stars and it has actually been working pretty well overall.  No one has any idea how all these pick will work out but a couple of firsts, a couple of seconds plus a couple of prospects could work out pretty well.

For this coming season, it will come down to Chara.  When he is healthy, he can by himself create depth for them on defense.  He is like the #1 starter on a baseball team.  The #1 can't by himself make a pitching staff good but if you lose your #1, then someone who was an OK #2 becomes a marginal #1 and so on.  That is what will happed to the Bruins if Chara doesn't bounce back.  They won't be able to get the puck out of their own end.

[Roy H.]

To top it off, Sweeney takes the first rounder from the Hamilton trade, and selects some guy ranked in the 40s among prospects.

According to draft experts, the Bs totally blew the draft.  Not a good start, when you trade your 22 year old stud defenseman.

The NBA equivalent would be trading DeMarcus Cousins for draft picks, and then selecting Jordan Mickey with a lottery pick.

[Roy H.]

From CBS Sports:

Boston Bruins: What the hell, guys?

Seriously. What ... what are you doing?

I really don't know what the Bruins' plan was on Friday, other than to seemingly try and make the team significantly worse in the short-term.

Look, the NHL draft is a weird, unpredictable thing. It is entirely possible that one, or two, or even all of these draft picks the Bruins ended up with on Friday might pan out and be good NHL players at some point in the future. Maybe five years from now we're looking at Friday as a great day in Bruins history and the start of something really special. Maybe. If everything goes 100 percent perfect. But we know that's not how these things work. For anybody.

But in the meantime, what exactly is the plan here?

Trading Milan Lucic was actually a pretty good idea, and the return was probably very fair. But when you combine that with trading Dougie Hamilton for nothing but draft picks because you didn't want to pay him. And when you combine that with eating salary in the Lucic trade and not really solving your salary cap problems this season. And when you combine all of that with re-signing Adam McQuaid for four years and more than $2 million per season, it's just a baffling series of events.

And that's before you even get to the three players they selected with their trio of first-round picks (our Chris Peters wasn't a fan, while the first player selected was compared favorably on the NBCSN broadcast to Radko Gudas. Fine player, but not what you want at No. 13 overall).

Hamilton is a rising star in the NHL. He is 22 years old, already a pretty good top-pairing defensemen, and not only did the Bruins not want to pay him, the only thing they could get for him in a trade was three draft picks (No. 15, No. 45 and No. 52). Keep in mind that trade happened on the exact same day that the New York Islanders traded Griffin Reinhart, who is only a year younger than Hamilton and has almost no track record to speak of in the NHL (he has appeared in eight NHL games at this point) for the No. 16 and 33 pick. The difference between Hamilton and Reinhart in a trade in the NHL on Friday was an additional second-round draft pick. I know Hamilton is an RFA and Reinhart is still under contract, but the difference in talent and production should still be worth more than that.

And let's not forget the fact that the Bruins will commit more than $5 million in salary cap space next season by paying Adam McQuaid to be a third-pairing defensemen and Milan Lucic to play for the Los Angeles Kings. But they apparently wouldn't pay Dougie Hamilton, the type of young player that could have been a cornerstone player for years to come, $5 or $6 million.

It just doesn't make any [dang] sense.

Tyler Seguin and Hamilton should have been the foundation of the Bruins organization for the next decade. They now have Loui Eriksson, Reilly Smith and a couple of lottery tickets to show for them.

Incredible. Absolutely incredible.

CBS Sports draft pick grades:  C+, C-, D

Bleacher Report: C-, D+, F

[KGs Knee]

The Bruins are like that girl you keep falling madly in love with, but keeps breaking your heart every time you give her another chance.   You know it will end badly, but you're just so in love with her you fool yourself into thinking everything will be different this time.

So even though they have had a great run, and finally won a Cup, here I am with a broken heart yet again. The Bruins do it every single time. Sadly, I know they'll woo me back again eventually.

And break my heart again too.