Boston Bruins' Top Trade Candidate This Season

The Boston Bruins lead the rest of the league by a wide margin this season and are Stanley Cup favourites. This is one of the final seasons in which they are expected to be top Cup contenders and they will be willing to go all in this season at the trade deadline. This also means moving at least one player out in order to make space on the roster and remain cap compliant.

The Bruins won't have much cap space available once Jake Debrusk returns, so their main priority besides adding a high-end player is to move out someone who isn't contributing. That would easily be Mike Reilly who is eating up cap space while in the AHL. He has played just 10 games for the Bruins this season and just doesn't fit into the lineup when the group is healthy. In the NHL he has a cap hit of $3 million AAV for this year and next, but the Bruins have reduced that cap hit to $1.875 million AAV by keeping him in the minors.

There are two options to move Reilly's full cap hit out. The first is to just dump his cap and use a draft pick to do so. He would likely wind up on a seller who has cap space to take him on and looking for assets as they rebuild. The other is to have him go the other way as part of a trade to acquire the big fish they are after. Either one will be necessary and it will get Reilly off the Bruins' hands for next season as well when they will likely be giving a significant pay raise to David Pastrnak.