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Trade: B’s send Smith, Savard’s contract to Florida for Hayes

Reilly Smith, Patrick Wiercioch

Reilly Smith, Patrick Wiercioch

AP

Boston GM Don Sweeney remained a busy man on Wednesday, shipping forward Reilly Smith to Florida in exchange for Panthers winger Jimmy Hayes.

Oh, the B’s also sent Marc Savard’s contract to South Florida in the deal as well.

A quick look at the particulars:

• Hayes, 25, is a former Boston College standout that spent the last two years in Florida, scoring 11 and 19 goals in each of the last two seasons. A big man (6-foot-6, 221 pounds) and current RFA, it sounds as though his camp couldn’t agree on a new contract with Panthers GM Dale Tallon, hence the move to the Bruins.

• Smith, 24, was one of the pieces the Bruins acquired in the Tyler Seguin-to-Dallas trade. After a good first year in Boston, scoring 20 goals and 51 points, Smith tailed off a bit this year and saw his totals drop to 13G and 40PTS. Unlike Hayes, Smith is under contract for two more years with a cap hit of $3.425 million.

• The Savard contract was rumored to be in play. At the draft, Philly moved Chris Pronger’s deal to Arizona, setting the stage for Boston to do the same with Savard. Brough touched on this yesterday:

Sweeney confirmed today that he’s spoken to a few teams about a transaction that would clear Savard’s $4 million cap hit (through 2016-17) off Boston’s books, and put it on a team that could perhaps use it.

No longer able to play due to concussion issues, Savard has an actual salary of just $575,000 in the final two years of his contract.

Dealing Savard would help the B’s in that they wouldn’t be as prone to the bonus-related overage issues that have plagued them recently. On that note, Sweeney suggested the Bruins intend to keep spending to the cap, and that they’re dealing with a current overage of approximately $1 million.

The Savard move was done so the B’s could ink former Anaheim forward Matt Beleskey in free agency.