Did Boston Bruins general manager Don Sweeney sign two of the best NHL contract extensions in the past decade?
Sweeney has received criticism for being so limited by the payroll limits last offseason and this season. Some of that criticism is undoubtedly justified, but it is the price an NHL team must pay to remain a consistent Stanley Cup contender in the salary cap age. Throw in the basically flattened cap that NHL general managers have had to work with when COVID halted the world until the 2019-20 season, and Sweeney’s managerial body of work could be among the finest in the NHL. His teams have made the Stanley Cup Playoffs four times in a row since COVID, and when the Boston Bruins return to the ice for the 2024 Stanley Cup playoffs later this month, it will be eight straight playoff appearances in nine seasons under Sweeney’s leadership.
Sweeney’s and the Bruins’ ongoing success and playoff appearances can be attributed in part to the contract extensions he inked with Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak in 2016 and 2017. Sweeney extended Marchand’s deal for eight years and $49 million ($6.1 million AAV) on September 26, 2016, and signed Pastrnak to a six-year, $40 million ($6.6 million AAV) contract just under a year later, on September 14, 2017.
As the tweet below points out, those two contract extensions are among the greatest any NHL general manager has signed his players to in the recent decade.
Brad Marchand has emerged as an exceptional NHL winger, four-time all-star, and the 27th captain in Bruins franchise history after signing his contract deal, which ends after the next season. After signing the agreement, the now-35-year-old winger scored 30 goals in three consecutive seasons (39, 34, and 36), and he did it again in 2021-22, scoring 32 goals. If he can break his current ten-game goalless run and score his 28th goal of the season and 400th of his career when the Bruins face the Hurricanes in Carolina on Thursday night, he will have five games to reach 30 goals for the sixth time. Marchand has 569 games under his belt, with 246 goals and 391 assists.
Since signing that contract extension in September 2017, David Pastrnak has gone on to become one of the NHL’s finest goal scorers and dynamic playmakers, as well as a Boston Bruins legend. Over the course of that six-year contract, Pastrnak scored 30 goals in all but one season, the COVID-shortened 2020-21 season, in which he scored 20 goals in 48 games. He had 35 goals in the first season of the contract in 2017-18, 38 in 2018-19, and 48 in 2019-20. If the latter season had not been halted due to COVID, Pastrnak would most likely have enjoyed his first 50-goal season. He finally achieved that milestone with authority last season, scoring 61 goals in 82 games, and he has 46 goals in 76 games this season.
Pastrnak scored 242 goals and had 252 assists in 420 games over the course of his six-year contract, which expired after last season, and that is why, as he has demonstrated again this season with 46 goals and 58 assists in 76 games, he is worth every penny of the second extension Sweeney signed him to when he locked him up on an eight-year, $90 million ($11.2 million AAV) contract extension last season.
