Boston Bruins winger Jake DeBrusk has once again made it clear that he wants to sign a contract extension with the Bruins.
In a recent one-on-one interview with Boston Hockey Now, the 27-year-old winger, who can become an unrestricted free agent on July 1, reiterated his desire to don the Spoked B past this season and also to help the 100-year-old, Original 6 franchise win their seventh Stanley Cup.
“Yeah, of course,” Debrusk replied before the question was even finished. “That’s what I’ve been consistent with since – I think the first time I was asked was in the summer – but yeah. This is all I know, and I grew up here and have obviously evolved and grown in different ways. It’s one of those things where I want to win here. We were one game away in ’19, and I want to win a Cup here in Boston. So that’s my complete focus.”
As DeBrusk pointed out, this isn’t the first time he has expressed his desire to remain with the team that drafted him 14th overall at the 2015 NHL Entry Draft.
“I’m hoping to stay (with the Boston Bruins). It’s the only team that I know and the team that I grew up with,” DeBrusk told NHL.com last August. “Hopefully, it goes in that direction, and we’ll see how it goes.”
Then, at the team golf tournament in September, DeBrusk tried to get the contract talks – which he said hadn’t begun at that point – jumpstarted.
“I’m approaching it just getting ready for game 1,” Jake DeBrusk told reporters. “Getting my game ready, and I guess when it comes to contract talks, it’s one of those things where you need two sides to tango, and if it happens, it happens, but it’s one of those things where it’s obviously not my main focus, but it’s going to be a big year for our team in general, and I know that if I’m doing my part and having success with production and certain things that will help our team. So, I think it goes hand in hand, and it’s one of those things that I’m just ready to get the season started. I’m excited for it, and it’s just about staying healthy.”
Ironically, just a few days after that, Boston Bruins general manager Don Sweeney had this to say when asked about extending the 6-foot-1, 200-pound winger.
“We’d like to know if Jake indeed does what to be here,” said Sweeney. “Hopefully, we can find common ground. We’d like to see Jake remain with the Boston Bruins.”
Well, DeBrusk, who now has 12 goals and 13 assists in 46 games and had a three-game goal streak snapped in the Bruins’ 3-2 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes on Wednesday night, has continued to show on and off the ice; he wants to remain a Bruin. He has seven goals and seven assists in his last 15 games and has become a multi-faceted weapon for Bruins head coach Jim Montgomery, who recently said his recent play is the ‘best version’ of DeBrusk that he’s seen since becoming head coach of the Bruins prior to last season.
Per his rule to not discuss contract negotiations, that preseason quote above is the last time that Sweeney has directly commented on the potential of extending DeBrusk, but the Bruins winger is writing a hefty pay raise from his current $4 million cap hit. So it will be interesting to see if, as Sweeney did two years ago when he signed DeBrusk to his current two-year, $8 million contract at the 2022 NHL Trade Deadline, he gets him signed again by the March 8, 2024, NHL Trade Deadline.
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