Bruins Record Huge NHL Trade Deadline Win with Prudent Deal with Capitals

The trade deadline has a way of manufacturing anxiety and a sudden sense of urgency in even the coolest cucumbers among us.

Sometimes the urgency is warranted. Let's say your team is in a playoff spot, but a key player suffered a season-ending injury a few weeks before the trade deadline. Your team is going to want to outsource a replacement with a similar skill set, and you're right to be disappointed if it has the cap space and the problem spelled out like this and it still doesn't get anything done.

Other times no one is injured but your playoff-bound team has identified an issue specific enough to improve upon by adding a player—weak depth at left defense position, lack of finishing touch with scoring, a stale power play that could use an extra playmaker, etc.

Or perhaps it's more simple: There's a solid player available and your team has the resources and cap space to make the acquisition. I'm not going to fault anyone for seeking out a pre-playoff boost.

All of this is to say, I was grappling with the Boston Bruins' options headed into the March 3 deadline before they ended up making the surprising-yet-savvy acquisition of Garnet Hathaway and Dmitry Orlov from the Capitals in a three-team deal Thursday. In exchange, the Bruins sent them Craig Smith, a 2023 first-round pick, a 2024 third-round pick and a 2025 second-round pick. The Minnesota Wild also received a 2023 fifth-round pick and will retain 25 percent of Orlov's salary.

More on the trade later, back to the grappling.

The Bruins are ripping through regular-season NHL records, with new head coach Jim Montgomery helping younger players maximize their games and breathing life into the battle-tested core. Their 91 points through 56 games (43-8-5) tied an NHL record for the fewest games to reach 90 points, and they're currently on pace to break the NHL records for most points (132 by the 1976-77 Montreal Canadiens) and wins (62 by the 1995-96 Detroit Red Wings and the 2018-19 Tampa Bay Lightning) in a regular season.

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In the same breath, this Bruins leadership group knows as well as anyone that the Presidents' Trophy means little when faced with a clean slate in the playoffs.

"People have talked a lot about some of these records that we could potentially hit or we have hit. Nobody cares about those in this room," Brad Marchand told ESPN's Greg Wyshynski Wednesday. "We could care less about any of these regular-season records. Because they really don't mean anything."

I get his point, but to me, all this record-hunting shows that this is a team with great chemistry and the potential to win a Cup—a prospect not many anticipated in the offseason when we were wondering if captain Patrice Bergeron was going to return.

To me, the almost surprise dominance of the season added a twist to the Bruins' trade deadline options—do you take advantage of this situation and "go all in"? What would that even look like for this team? Or do you add complementary pieces that don't disrupt the locker room by trading minimal NHL roster players?

The Bruins appear to have chosen the latter—barring a blockbuster in the coming days—and it feels like the right call. They fulfilled their "needs" (more like wants) on defense and toughness with a little bit of depth scoring, and they only had to give up Craig Smith from the current NHL roster. They had been looking to unload his $3.1 million contract as it was.

According to ESPN insider Emily Kaplan, the Bruins had been monitoring "all" of the big names, with an emphasis on left defense, before going in on Orlov and Hathaway.

The Bruins had been reportedly keeping tabs on Jakob Chychrun for a while now. And up to hours before the actual trade, insiders including Kaplan pointed to Columbus' Vladislav Gavrikov. Kaplan said the talks were "advanced" between the two clubs.

Gavrikov owns a $2.8 million cap hit, which certainly isn't the end of the world for a defenseman who could play alongside star Charlie McAvoy (for the record, "could" is doing a lot of work for me here). But according to CapFriendly, the Bruins were projected to have less than $50,000 in cap space before the trade, which is obviously why they got rid of Smith's relatively pricey contract.

If they had snagged Gavrikov instead, that would have likely been the only bigger move the Bruins could have afforded without compromising too much of the clearly magical roster. And it likely would have cost a similar amount of draft capital. Would that have been a mistake for Boston?

Gavrikov brings size and strength at 6'3", and I see the appeal of having a bouncer type like him. But McAvoy and Matt Grzelcyk are doing more than fine, and then you look at the season Hampus Lindholm is having and you wonder if the Bruins should disrupt any of the top pairings.

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Then you have Connor Clifton, who outplays his size and checks with the best of them, and Derek Forbort, who provides penalty-killing grit that's essential for the playoffs. Lest we forget about 6'6" Brandon Carlo, who is proficient in tough minutes when he has to be.

Wait, folks, come to think of it, it's almost like this record-breaking team's defense is pretty good already. There's some talk around Boston about reuniting McAvoy with a big-and-tough partner similar to Zdeno Chara, but it would be risky to move Grzelcyk to a different pairing when he is a league-best plus-36 and on pace for a career-high 30 points.

I was pleasantly surprised that the Bruins changed course and opted for Orlov and Hathaway instead of Gavrikov. They got a potential top-four defenseman in Orlov anyway, and they added more grit all around with Hathaway, a 6'3" bottom-six forward who has nine goals and 16 points in 59 games.

Gavrikov would've been a solution to a problem that doesn't exist for the Bruins. They've been fine on defense, but some sturdy help on the left side couldn't hurt.

Orlov and Hathaway are smart complementary players for a deep run. I like the deal as an insurance move in anticipation of a potential injury or poor performance from one of the established defensemen.

I'm not expecting this to be the reason the Bruins win the Cup, and that's the beauty—they aren't messing with something that is clearly, record-breakingly not broken.