First off, the Bruins are either very lucky, or Chiarelli played this perfectly. The core of the team is signed, and only a few moves have to be made. With the lack of quality free agents, and the rise in the salary cap (and floor), the few good UFA's are going to get (over) paid. Teams have money that HAS to be spent. In the NFL, guys often get lured to crappy teams with boatloads of cash because contracts are not guaranteed. They need to get paid when the money is there, so even bad teams sign good free agents. Not as much in the NHL. Brad Richards is not signing with Florida, even though if they wanted to, they could probably offer him the biggest pay day. Florida is not alone, there are several other teams who need to add money just to get to the floor of the cap.

So once the free agency period begins, and the big domino's fall, there are still going to be teams who have to add money to their cap. At that point, there will be two choices, way over pay whomever is left. Or, trade for a big contract. Florida already did that with Brian Campbell, and you know what... it was a good move. Sure he is way over paid, probably by 2X, but he is a puck moving defenseman. If he didn't have such a gaudy contract, people wouldn't criticize his play as much. There is little to no chance that Florida could get a guy like him in this free agency, so if they are being forced to spend the money, might as well get something they need. Frankly I am a bit surprised that there weren't more deals like the Campbell one at the draft. Any GM with a contract they don't want should be calling all teams that need big contracts.

Back to the Bruins, with all that money out there, I think there is little to no chance that Kaberle gets resigned. Unless the Bruins are willing to pay him far more then the media types have predicted they would. I could see Ryder taking less to return because of his relationship with Julien. Claude stuck with him when everyone was calling for him to be cut. Also, the Bruins have been overpaying him (certainly for the last two seasons), so maybe they have bought his loyalty to a certain extent. Still, you can be sure that Ryder will have more lucrative deals waiting for him.

Most of all, I am happy that the core is signed and the Bruins really won't have participate in the games of  what could be a really wild off season free agent market (Brooks Laitch, 6 years, 27 million... yikes!) .