Morning Skate: Shopping trip

It is Wednesday, my dudes — and it is time for NHL teams to start spending silly sums of money!

Free agency officially begins at noon Eastern time today, though it’s likely that we’ll hear about some pending deals this morning.

We all know the Bruins have needs, particularly on defense, so we’ll see what gets done today.

The B’s have been linked with Nate Schmidt, who is reportedly on the trade block headed to Winnipeg, as well as Alex Goligoski.

Other names like Alec Martinez, Keith Yandle, and Jamie Oleksiak are already off the block, so...we’ll see what Dealin’ Don gets done.

We also learned yesterday that David Krejci’s return to the Bruins is pending, according to Kirk Luedeke of the New England Hockey Journal.

Other reports indicated that the two sides are hammering out the details of whether it’ll be a one-year or two-year deal, but that isn’t expected to be a sticking point.

While there are (as mentioned above) questions on D, if the Bruins head into October with their entire second line intact, that’s a win.

If Krejci has already re-signed, ignore Past Me; I wrote this Tuesday night. Past Me didn’t know what Current You knows.

Today’s discussion topic

Every year at free agency, one player gets signed to a deal that is universally panned as great for the player, horrible for the team — who will it be this year?