Trying to game out the rest of the offseason if Krejci returns.
B's are a million under the cap right now with 14F 8D and 1G. Adding Swayman and waiving Blidh and Kuhlman leaves them at $1.69 million in cap space with a full 23 man roster, 13F, 8D, 2G. This roster also doesn't include anyone who is waivers exempt, so removing anyone would require waivers.
Marchand - Bervgeron - Pastrnak
Hall - Coyle - Smith
DeBrusk - Haula - Foligno
Nosek - Frederic - Wagner
Lazar
Grzelyck - McAvoy
Reilly - Carlo
Forbort - Clifton
Zboril - Moore
Ullmark
Swayman
I'm just making guesses here, but Getzlaf came in at 1-year $4.5 million for Anaheim. Krejci has said it's not about the money and they could also use a bonus structure to keep the cap hit down for this year, but Krejci is better and younger than Getzlaf. So let's say, high end, Krejci gets about $5.5 million. That means to fit Krejci in, they would need to clear a minimum of $3.81. I figure in an ideal world they'd like to enter the year with ~$2 million in cap space. That gives them some wiggle room for call ups, accrues as they approach the deadline, and also leaves room for the potential in-season Rask addition. So in reality, they probably need to move $6 million if Krejci returns without taking anything back.
Jake makes $3.675 mill AAV so they'll need to trade him plus another piece just for Krejci. The obvious candidate is Moore at $2.75 mil AAV. Wagner feels useless at $1.35 mil AAV. Both have 2-years left. They probably have negative trade value though, so if they are attached to Jake it's going to substantially limit any return. I think we'd see DeBrusk, Moore, Wagner to XXX for Future Considerations with DeBrusk essentially being the sweetener in the deal for taking on Moore and Wags.
Which brings us to another option. Go full Tampa. I haven't worked it through, but I think they could get close enough to the cap to do the LTIR trick. We don't have any candidates, but Anaheim is sitting on Ryan Kesler's dead money. $6.875 million for one more year. That would give the Bruins a cap ceiling of $88.375 million, which is enough to basically keep everyone, DeBrusk included, and sign Krejci, Rask. It'd kinda be a true all-in.