Bruins’ Cam Neely reveals what led to Taylor Hall trade

On Monday, the Boston Bruins traded Taylor Hall and the rights to Nick Foligno to the Chicago Blackhawks in exchange for pending restricted free agents Alec Regula and Ian Mitchell. Foligno went on to sign with the Hawks.

The Bruins therefore managed to clear Hall’s $6 million salary from their books as he’s signed at the cap hit through the 2024-25 season on the four-year extension he signed with Boston in 2021. When team president Cam Neely met media on Tuesday to discuss the trade and how it impacts the Bruins’ offseason moving forward, he explained what led to the heartbreaking decision to part with Hall. He could only blame the salary cap.

“We figured that if the cap didn’t go up we were going to have some juggling to do. We unfortunately lose Taylor, a great player for us. We really loved him as a Bruin…unfortunately, the cap didn’t go up like everybody was hoping for.”

Seeing that Hall’s cap space has been moved, it is believed that the Bruins will use it to take a run at re-signing Tyler Bertuzzi before he becomes an unrestricted free agent on Saturday.

Bertuzzi, who was traded by Red Wings to Boston, is coming off a two-year, $9.5 million deal he signed with Detroit in 2021. The contract carried an average annual value of $4.75 million.

Many fans have the feeling that there will be a series of salary cap space-clearing moves on the NHL trade market in the short future.

We get the tough call in Boston, but they have to respect the rules. The NHL salary cap will be set at $83.5 million for the 2023-24 season, a cap will rise by $1 million from the current campaign. The Bruins currently now have $10.9M in projected cap space with 14 players on the roster, per PuckPedia.

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