Rumor Mill: The Bruins Almost Traded For Dennis Wideman?!

Was told by a trusted source that if Dennis Wideman's suspension was 5 or less he would have been traded to the #Bruins at its conclusion.

— Reed Duthie (@rcduthie) February 4, 2016

If this is legitimate, it's pretty baffling. No, Wideman isn't the worst regular D-Man in the league, but he's not a particularly good one either. He has nineteen points on the year--eight on the Power Play--and was playing pretty typical Wideman-levels of defense before his 20-game suspension for checking a referee.

He's also 32 years old, and carries a $5.25 million cap hit for this season (though it'd obviously be a fraction of that for the rest of the year) and is due to haul in $6 million in 2016-17. The financial bit starts making a little bit more sense if you assume that the Flames would retain some salary, but...Dennis Wideman being an answer feels an awful lot like someone would be asking the wrong question.

If there's any truth to this rumor, then the Bruins dodged a bullet when the suspension shut things down.