Andrew Ference is considered one of the leagues more solid and reliable puck moving defenseman. They are as hard to come by in this league as pure goal scorers. You would not want to see us lose him. Teams like Ottawa would kill to have his presence. People forget we had the best goals against average of the entire NHL. This was not all Tim Thomas. Ference was one of the team leaders in blocked shots. He alway is, no matter what team it was. He may be injury prone, but I'd rather risk that then lose a movable "D". The biggest problem with Kessel is we are damned if we do and damned if we don't. Teams know we need to trade him to stay under the cap so we won't get much for him. (Not to mention we could only afford approximately 1.2 million on another player anyways) If we keep him we would most likely be losing two players. We were one of the best offensive team in the East stat-wise(2nd overall) We risk chemistry trading away our forwards. We may lose Kessel, but we have a chance to replace his goals with Sturm. (Cam Neel predicted at the start of last season that he will be the next Bruin to score 40) It's always regrettable losing anyone, but I think the goal should be to keep as many players from last year as possible. We were first in the East. Barring a few injuries, and I think we could have beat Pitt for the East.
Posted by Bruins13909