In an interview on TSN on Tuesday, free agent defenseman Cody Franson said that he currently has interest from 5 or 6 teams and that one of those teams is the Boston Bruins.
With the Bruins defense thinning out over the last two years, primarily with the loss of Johnny Boychuk last summer and Dougie Hamilton this summer, not to mention a couple key pieces of their blue line are getting older and less effective, the team is certainly looking to bolster their blue line. The signing of Matt Irwin this summer was a start at rebuilding that group, but he’s no replacement for what the team lost in Hamilton. Franson would be close.
Cody Franson told @TSN1040 that the Bruins "are one of the teams we're in talks with", and said it's currently 5 or 6 interested teams
— Joe Haggerty (@HackswithHaggs) July 21, 2015
The problem for the Bruins remains the same old story: the cap. It’s why they had to move Boychuk last year and it’s a huge piece of why the team couldn’t get Hamilton back on contract this summer and moved him before another team put in an offer sheet.
According to General Fanager’s projections, the Bruins have just under $4.8 million of cap space to work with. Franson is likely to eat up all of that, if not a little more. That projection excludes a back-up goaltender, whether that’s Malcolm Subban, Zane McIntyre, or another, the cap situation is tighter than the projection indicates. They’ll also need to have some wiggle room built in for call-ups and the other oddities that force a team into spending a little extra. (For instance, Subban has a performance bonus built into his contract.)
https://twitter.com/NickGossNESN/status/623562991796097026
If it is in fact the Bruins who sign Franson, they’ll need to make another move to get cap compliant before the start of the season. It is possible that the team goes above the salary cap during the summer while they figure out their roster, as long as they get back below the cap before the start of the season.
