The Presidents' Trophy winning Boston Bruins cleared $6 million off their cap earlier this week by trading forward Taylor Hall to the Chicago Blackhawks. With Hall's cap hit cleared Boston has $10,937,500 in cap space to work with.
Even with the extra cap space, things are going to be tight this summer for Boston. The deadline UFAs need contracts along with RFA goalie Jeremy Swayman. Boston also needs to wait to see if veterans Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci want to continue their pro careers and if they do, they will also need new contracts.
If general manager Don Sweeney believes that 24 year old Swayman is the franchise's goalie of the future, could Sweeney cash in on soon to be 30 year old Linus Ullmark's career season where he won the Vezina Trophy? Ullmark's value has never been higher, he is signed for two more seasons at a team friendly $5,000,000 per season. As good as Ullmark was during the regular season, he failed to replicate that play during the playoffs.
Two years ago, in an unprecedented move, Vegas traded the reigning Vezina winning goalie Marc-Andre Fleury to Chicago for virtually nothing (an AHL/ECHL player on an expiring contract was the return, which Vegas did not keep).