Don Sweeney concerns Bruins fans with Tyler Bertuzzi comments

Despite the Boston Bruins saying that the wanted to retain scrappy forward Tyler Bertuzzi, they were unable to do so. But the deal that he signed was a bit of an eye opener.

He inked a one-year contract with the Toronto Maple Leafs worth $5.5 million, a far cry from the reported multi-year deal that he was seeking. In fact, it was said that the chief reasoning behind his departure from the Detroit Red Wings at the 2023 NHL Trade Deadline was that Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman was unwilling to offer him a contract any longer than two or three years. 

And it almost appears as though there was nobody caught more off guard than Bruins general manager Don Sweeney, who had been working to try and figure out a way to keep Bertuzzi around in Boston for the long haul.

“Probably a little bit,” Sweeney replied when asked if he was caught off guard by the one-year contract Bertuzzi signed with the Maple Leafs.

“Again, I’ll speak more generally than just talking about a player on another team at this point in time," he continued. "There were players that were looking for longer-term deals, and my discussions were focused on that, and some teams were in a good position to be able to give shorter-term deals at the right numbers, and we had to go and fill our gaps. We made a move to open up the space we needed. It would’ve required us to be even more proactive and do deals that we explored, but we didn’t feel the value was there to open up even more space or to be overly aggressive and to do a deal and have to make a move as a result of that.”

Bruins fans, do you believe that Bertuzzi's year in Toronto will be enough to try and make Sweeney take another swing at him next summer? 

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