When (all right, “if”) this lockout ever gets settled, how will Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs’ work over the last few months affect his team going forward? 

Jacobs probably hasn’t made a ton of friends during the lockout (unless he and Ryan Miller settled their differences last week and became best friends, a la Stephanie Tanner and Gia; another column for another time). He’s angered players in the negotiating room (Miller), reportedly pulled rank on representatives of other teams and, though never popular with fans around Boston in the first place, has drained whatever good faith bankrolling a Stanley Cup-winning team had gotten him. 

When you hear Gary Bettman talk about how much pressure he had been under to pull the make-whole provision (money to offset the players’ decreased hockey-related revenue) off the table, you can imagine that Jacobs is a part of the group of owners fighting to draw a harder line. Jacobs has been a huge part of these negotiations, so much so that when the owners got some new faces in there last week for players/owners-only negotiations, Jacobs was one of the seven owners in the room. 

For the record, the owners made mammoth strides last week by bumping up the make-whole to $300 million. Granted, they started off these negotiations so far out in Bonkersville that coming a long way doesn’t necessarily mean they’re in the right at this point. Still, a deal could have gotten done last week, and the fact that the owners’ proposal was never even put to a vote on the players’ side is what fans should really be mad about. 

Whether what the owners offered last week truly is off the table remains to be seen. It’s hard to imagine they really would try to start from scratch, but it’s safe to say that whenever the new CBA is reached, the salary cap will be dropped in its second year, and that’s where Jacobs and the hard-line owners’ work will put the Bruins in a bit of a pickle. 

Prior to the lockout, the salary cap for the coming (or not coming) season was set at $70.2 million. That probably won’t be case once a new CBA is reached, but assuming there’s some sort of grace period in the first year since teams prepared for the figure, the Bruins ($68,867,976 against the cap for next season) probably will be in the clear. 

It’s the next year that Bruins fans should be worried about. Jim Matheson of the Edmonton Journal had an interesting piece last month that took a look at the type of trouble the Oilers would be in if the cap were to drop to $60 million in the second year of the CBA, and it's been reported that the owners have indeed proposed that $60 million cap for 2013-14. That wouldn’t be pretty for the Oilers ($48.5 million to just 14 players), but it would be even uglier for the Bruins.

The aforementioned $68 million-plus committed to the next NHL season accounts for 23 players. All of the key pieces are signed, and the B’s wouldn’t face any issue roster or money-wise. Yet two seasons from now (another reason to hate the lockout: It's a pain having to make references to “the next season” and “two seasons from now” instead of “this year” and “next year”), the Bruins would have $57,351,310 committed against the cap to only 16 players. 

Furthermore, none of those players are named Tuukka Rask. In fact, none of them play goalie, as backup Anton Khudobin also will be a free agent, though he’ll be unrestricted while Rask will be restricted. Among the other players set to become free agents after next season are Andrew Ference and Nathan Horton. 

If the cap were to be $60 million, the Bruins would have less than $3 million to both fill out their roster and sign perhaps the most important piece of their future in Rask. Remember, Rask signed a one-year, $3.5 million deal this summer so he could turn his next season into a more lucrative payday. Even if Rask has a so-so season and gets a deal with the same $3.5 million cap hit, the B’s would have to shed salary to retain him. 

Of course, this was a scenario that everyone, including the Bruins, saw coming before the lockout. Peter Chiarelli and the B’s signed Milan Lucic (three years at $6 million per), Tyler Seguin (six years at $5.75 million per) and Brad Marchand (four years at $4.5 million per) prior to the lockout knowing that even if they didn’t have to shell out the full amount on the contracts depending on the CBA, an ugly cap situation might be in the team’s future.

“I’m taking the approach that if we have to shuffle our roster, delete from our roster, to get to a level of salary, then it will be hard from the perspective of trading players,” Chiarelli said in September after signing Seguin. “But I’d rather have the players [signed]. I’d rather have them locked up, I’d rather have them committed in what I think is a responsible framework, a working framework in light of where the CBA will go. Then I’d rather try and deal with it, with those players in the mix, players that we know.”

There’s still a ton to be sorted out, starting with a new collective bargaining agreement. Assuming the owners don’t really pull what they’ve offered off the table, it’s hard to imagine a new CBA being more than a couple of weeks away. Once that comes, a lot of teams will have to adjust accordingly, and the Bruins’ future cap number might be among the things that needs addressing.