Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

2010 NHL Free Agency: Bruins sign Mark Stuart to one-year, $1.675M deal

stuarthaha.jpg

For better or worse, the Boston Bruins roster is just about set.

The team signed 26-year-old defenseman Mark Stuart to a one-year, $1.675 million contract. TSN has more.

The 26-year-old Stuart is a veteran of 252 NHL regular season games and has compiled 12 goals, 23 assists for 35 points and 261 penalty minutes in those contests. He has also skated in 22 Stanley Cup Playoff games, registering 0-2=2 totals in the postseason.

Last season, Stuart played in 56 games for Boston, notching seven points and 80 penalty minutes before being sidelined for 26 regular season games and eight postseason contests with a broken left pinky finger and a subsequent infection within that finger.

During his 2008-2009 campaign, Stuart set career highs in goals (5), assists (12) and points (17) as well as tying his career high in games played (82). He then added an assist in 11 postseason games that year. He has spent his entire career within the Bruins organization, and had played in 234 consecutive games prior to his injury last year.

So far, the Bruins blueline consists of Stuart, Zdeno Chara, Dennis “Pain Sponge” Seidenberg, Andrew Ference, Johnny Boychuk and Matt Hunwick. That’s not exactly a world-beating bunch, so maybe the Bruins are justified in considering moving a top-six forward (or Tim Thomas?) to raise the overall level of talent.

Still, coach Claude Julien has done a solid job of instilling an overall commitment to defense.

The team only has a little more than $1 million of cap space left with 19 roster spots filled according to CapGeek. GM Peter Chiarelli will probably need to make a minor move or two to make it work.