Could Patrice Bergeron be our #2 Center?

Are you looking at Bergeron as a 1-year fix with Josefsen taking over the #2 center role in 2011-2012? Because that’s the only context where Bergeron would be less expensive than Sharp.

Sharp is signed for 2 more years with a cap hit of $3.9 million. His actual salaries for the two years are $4.1 and $4.2 million.

Bergeron is signed for next year at a cap hit of $4.75 million, with an actual salary of $5.75 million, and he will be UFA at age 25 after the season.

With Josefsen waiting in the wings, plus whatever happens with Martin and Kovalchuk this summer; new contracts for Parise and Greene next summer; Zajac and possibly Clarkson after that; along with replacing Marty and possible new deals for guys like Elias, Langenbrunner, White, and Salvador; another high-priced long term contract for Bergeron doesn’t make sense from a cap standpoint.

And that brings up the question of whether or not it would be worth the cost in picks and young players to acquire Bergeron for one season.

the only time i’ve ever seen either of these guys play is a little of taylor hall in this past year’s world junior championship, but i would tend to agree with njdevils33. taylor hall has been touted as the #1 in this year’s draft for a few years, but i think that anyone putting hall over seguin is doing it based on reputation. i believe seguin has overtaken hall as central scouting’s #1 north american player.

these are kids, after all, and different kids develop at vastly different rates. i personally find in a lot of spheres of life that late-bloomers turn out to have more potential than initially thought. seguin seems to be a bit more of a late-bloomer (not that he wasn’t a highly touted prospect before this year) and that makes me feel like his potential is greater. also, hall played with amazing teammates in cam fowler, ryan ellis, and an overage adam henrique. seguin’s stats are more impressive in that context.

holding all else equal, i also believe that a center is of more value to a team than a winger. you can almost always move a center to wing, but you can’t move a wing to center. and most of the dominant forwards in the league are centers, not wingers.

as far as a trade of wheeler + #2 for the #1 pick in the draft? even though i feel strongly that seguin will be the greater player, I think boston would be crazy to make that trade. they lucked out in getting wheeler, who has a lot of potential, and what if he became a huge star after he was traded? seguin and hall will both be great players and the difference between them isn’t worth a guy like wheeler. if the bruins end up with hall, i’m sure they’ll be more than happy to line him up alongside either savard or krejci. add to that a rugged winger like lucic or ryder and you have the makings of a devastating line. they can’t really go wrong either way when it comes to hall vs seguin.

as far as the oilers’ needs go, they already have a pair of young centers in horcoff and gagner. you could argue that horcoff has disappointed and that they should pick seguin. on the other hand, their wingers are less impressive – penner, hemsky, brule, o’sullivan, cogliano, nilsson. i think they need a winger more than they need a center, but when it comes to the #1 pick they should probably go with the best player available, straight up. but for sure, if i were the oilers GM and the bruins offered wheeler up to exchange the picks, i would jump at the opportunity. that would give you two out of three players for your first line of the future.

i love thinking about trade scenarios. it’s way more fun and challenging than free agents. you gotta give something to get something good in return.

i’m not entirely sure what you mean by “tough minutes” – playing against the opposition’s top line? i think if bergeron were brought in the devils would relish putting him up against the opposition’s top line – freeing up zajac to think more offensively. it would also take some pressure off of josefson if we have another good two-way center besides zajac. if josefson plays well, he can be put on a line with more skilled guys (say, elias and tedenby) and you can put bergeron in more of a checking role with, say, zubrus and rolston. if he’s struggling to score, then you put bergeron in a more prominent scoring role. or you could mix it up a little and have, say, elias-josefson-zubrus and tedenby-bergeron-rolston and have three lines that play great two-way hockey!

lou seems to think they’ll both likely make the team. even if they sign a center, their top 9 forwards are parise-zajac-langs-elias-zubrus-rolston-center-clarkson-josefson. who else is going to be in the top 9 for the team? zharkov? pandolfo? PL3? i do think tedenby is more likely to go to the AHL for the start of the season than josefson is.

The Bruins could definitely consider Bergeron’s versatility too important to let him go and could deal Krejci instead. There are a few things which I think make Bergeron more likely to be traded, however. If the Bruins want to lock one of them up long-term, Bergeron represents the higher risk because of his concussion history. Furthermore, even though they are the same age (Bergeron is actually a couple months younger!), Bergeron will become a UFA in 2011, while Krejci will become an RFA in 2012.

That said, Krejci is a fine two-way player but does not possess Bergeron’s defensive and faceoff ability. He is also likely to extract greater return in a trade than Bergeron is. I would love to trade for Krejci as well. I imagine the Bruins would demand one of our top prospects at D as well as at wing, or one of those plus a first-rounder. A heavy price to pay, but I think there’s a lot to like about Krejci.

I think this is a Bruins fan’s dream. They have equal 5-million-dollar salaries, but that’s where the similarities end. Thomas is old and got outplayed by Rask. He can be the starter in Philly, but whether he can provide value commensurate to his salary is very questionable. Carter is young and is a legitimate sniper who is potting enough goals to justify his salary. He is also an RFA at the end of this year. Philly does have a glut of good young forwards who will be due for a raise next year, but I think they can do much better than trading Carter for Thomas. My guess is that the Flyers will sign a veteran UFA goalie for cheap this season, hold on to all of their assets at forward, and go for a Cup this year. The time to trade guys like Carter will come next offseason.

i’m pretty sure he meant trading fraser and zharkov for the 15th overall pick in the draft, which is Boston’s second of two first round draft picks.

regardless, fraser and zharkov would not cut it for a #15 draft pick. consider that that is a higher pick than what we picked tedenby or josefson at.