Felger & Mazz: Bruins Should Explore Dangling Bergeron In Trade Offers, Even Though Don Sweeney Said It's Not Happening
BOSTON (CBS) -- The end-of-season press conference with Boston Bruins GM Don Sweeney and head coach Claude Julien was not pretty. The whole presser was peppered with sell-jobs that Sweeney tried to push on the Bruins faithful, including that besides all those games they lost the team actually had a really good season.
One comment of Sweeney's that was not so asinine, however, was his assertion that franchise center Patrice Bergeron "isn't going anywhere," and that the Bruins don't need a "major overhaul." But, in typical Felger & Massarotti fashion, that didn't stop the show from spending the entire opening segment on how the Bruins can trade Bergeron to facilitate a total rebuild.
Mazz believes that, while he loves the player and doesn't think the Bruins would actually do it, Bergeron would be the ultimate trade chip in a rebuild.
"If you really want to rebuild [the team], Bergeron's the guy you dangle," said Mazz. "You can get a haul for Bergeron. What if you could get a good young two-way center and, like, two good young prospects? What if you could get that? Because I don't think that's outrageous."
SEE ALSO: Do the Bruins Really Need To Rebuild?
Mazz is not wrong about the second part; trading Bergeron, one of the best all-around forwards in the NHL, would theoretically bring in a boatload of top-level prospects and/or already-strong young players at the NHL level. Michael Felger proposed sending Bergeron to Tampa Bay for Victor Hedman and Jonathan Drouin while James Stewart brought up Peter Chiarelli's Edmonton Oilers and their young future franchise defenseman, Darnell Nurse.
All of this, of course, is just fantasy talk. It's fair to wonder what the Bruins should really do to fix the team, and if they wanted to go full-on rebuild, Bergeron would be the piece that attracts the heaviest package in a trade. But Sweeney already said, emphatically, that neither a rebuild nor a Bergeron trade is going to happen. They are not - but it's still a scorcher of a take from the show, especially when they openly admit they're talking fantasy-land.
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