NHL Rumors: Milan Lucic Agrees to Contract with Bruins After 4 Seasons with Flames

Veteran winger Milan Lucic is returning to the Boston Bruins, with TSN's Pierre LeBrun reporting Saturday he agreed to a one-year, $1 million deal with the team.

Lucic began his NHL career in Boston and spent eight seasons with the team. He's coming off a four-year run with the Calgary Flames.

The 35-year-old finished with fewer than 20 points for the first time in his career in 2022-23. He scored seven goals and assisted on 12 more.

That continued a prolonged trend as Lucic last hit 30-plus points in 2017-18. ESPN's Greg Wyshynski was blunt when he described the 2011 Stanley Cup winner as "an average defender and a below-average offensive player whose physicality could be what keeps him in the league."

But the Boston Globe's Matt Porter laid out Thursday why a reunion made sense for the Bruins. Lucic's experience could be invaluable depending if David Krejčí and Patrice Bergeron both retire, and he has remained durable, missing just seven games across his entire Flames tenure.

Fans in Boston will be happy to see Lucic back as well.

Trading Taylor Hall to the Chicago Blackhawks was a sign of how limited the Bruins were financially this offseason with Tyler Bertuzzi hitting free agency. They had to offload Hall's $6 million salary cap hit to have any realistic hope of retaining Bertuzzi, and his return is far from assured.

General manager Don Sweeney can't take many big swings this offseason, so a short-term, low-cost pact with Lucic makes a lot of sense.