Hoping for the Bruins to spend big this offseason? Don’t count on it. 

Since the Bruins were eliminated surprisingly early by the Capitals in the first round nearly a month ago, it seems one coping mechanism for fans of the Black and Gold has been the idea that the team’s financial situation will allow for a big-name scorer to find his way to Boston this summer. You name the medium – email, twitter or even commenting on completely unrelated stories – and fans have used it to ask some sort of question about whether the Bruins will be signing Zach Parise. 

Recently, the rumors of Rick Nash to the Bruins popped back up when Blue Jackets play-by-play man Jeff Rimer reported Sunday that the B’s have a high level of interest in the winger. Rimer even went as far as saying that the Bruins were preparing a “major” package to secure the 27-year-old star’s services. 

It’s nice for fans to hope, but if the Bruins are giving big money to anyone this offseason, it will be Chris Kelly (who wouldn’t require them to break the bank) or Tuukka Rask before it will be a cap-killing superstar. 

Take Nash, for example. While a quick glance at the numbers (at least 30 goals in seven of the last eight seasons) would suggest that any team should be champing at the bit to have the former first overall pick on their side, it isn’t that simple for the Bruins. Nash has a contract unlike any the Bruins have ever seen – he’s entering the third year of an eight-year, $62.4 million deal with an annual cap hit of $7.8 million That’s one year longer with a larger cap hit than Zdeno Chara’s current deal (seven years, $45.5 million), and he would need to sign off on any trade due to his no-movement clause. 

Of course, common sense would suggest any player would rather contend for a Cup in Boston than waste the prime years of their career coming in last with the Blue Jackets. Regardless of whether or not Nash would want to come to Boston, the Bruins would be taking an ultimate risk in shaking up their roster – something Peter Chiarelli has said he will not do this offseason – for one high-priced player. 

Back when the initial wave of Nash-to-Boston rumors popped up in the regular season, the common theory was that the B’s would need to part with Rask in order to get Nash. Well, the Bruins would have to give up a heck of a lot more than that for multiple reasons. Yes, the Blue Jackets would likely have their sights set on Boston’s highly talented but still (let’s face it) partially unproven netminder to solve their goaltending woes, but they likely wouldn’t be satisfied with just Rask for Nash, plus the Bruins would probably have to move a bigger contract from their current roster in the deal. Fans have been hoping for the B’s to ship either David Krejci or Milan Lucic out of town since the Bruins were eliminated, but take a minute to consider the repercussions of losing either player. 

Krejci underperformed this postseason like you read about, but in the previous two playoff runs he was the team’s best forward. Plus, if the team gets rid of Krejci, that means that you could be looking at Tyler Seguin as the team’s No. 1 center after playing him at wing for the vast majority of his first two professional seasons. 

Lucic has been somewhat of a playoff goat the last two years (if it's possible to be a goat in a Cup-winning campaign, that is), and while he appeared to be sleepwalking at critical points in the first round against Washington this year, look at what the Bruins lost this season when Nathan Horton went down with his latest concussion. Without Horton, as Chiarelli noted after the B’s were eliminated, the Bruins became a smaller team. They lost size and they lost part of their heavy forecheck. Lucic, for all of his shortcomings the last two postseasons and his tendencies to be a bit of a hot-head (ask Freddy Meyer and Victor Hedman), is one of the premier power forwards in the NHL. If the Bruins lose Lucic, they lose a lot of what makes them such a tough team to play against. 

Then there’s the age-old argument of whether the Bruins should even consider trading Rask in any deal. He’s certainly due for a raise this summer from his $1.25 million cap hit, and he has been one of the best goalies in the league for stretches at a time. Still, at age 25, he has yet to take the majority of the starts in a given NHL regular season (taking his trade value down a peg), and the Bruins have as good a goaltending tandem as there is with Rask and Tim Thomas. In fact, it’s entirely possible that the Bruins might value Rask higher than other teams do. 

Plus, in Nash’s case -- and not that it’s his fault – he has played a grand total of four playoff games in his career and never won one. While the numbers were shiny in 2009’s first-round exit against the Red Wings (a goal and an assist for three points but a minus-4), it would be a risk to trade important pieces of both the current roster and the future without knowing whether the player will be able to come through when the season gets longer and longer. 

Also consider that Chiarelli has said before that the possibility exists that the cap could eventually go down. The Bruins don’t want to pile up big contracts only to be forced to move some of them. Such a scenario would also give the Bruins little leverage in trade talks to move those contracts, as every other team would know that the team would need to unload them one way or another. 

That isn’t a case of the Bruins being cheap, but a case of them being smart. Chiarelli, with owner Jeremy Jacobs’ blessing, regularly spends to the cap by the time the trade deadline has rolled around. For example, the fact that the B’s weren’t big spenders last offseason and knew Marc Savard could go on long-term injured reserve at any time meant the team entered the regular season around $3 million under the cap, with the ability to have more than $7 million in space were Savard to go on LTIR. All of that space allowed them to add the likes of Brian Rolston, Greg Zanon and Mike Mottau without having to do any major financial maneuvering on their NHL roster (only Steven Kampfer was shipped from the Bruins’ NHL roster, whereas Blake Wheeler and Mark Stuart had to be shipped out in February of 2011 in order to add Kelly, Rich Peverley and Tomas Kaberle). 

The Bruins want to be careful when it comes to the cap, and for good reason. Though multiple of the following players would likely have to be moved to get a Nash or to sign a Parise, consider once again some of the Bruins’ big-name free agents this year and the next: Rask (restricted) and Kelly, among others this year, plus Tyler Seguin (restricted), Brad Marchand (restricted), Milan Lucic (restricted), Jordan Caron (restricted), Andrew Ference and Horton next season. With the CBA uncertainty and nobody knowing for sure what the salary cap is going to look like, putting the roster in shaky standing would be highly un-Chiarelli-like and un-Bruins-like.