Additional details emerge on Tanner Jeannot’s contract with Bruins

The Bruins beat everybody else when it came to Tanner Jeannot on July 1.

Signed to a five-year, $17 million contract on the first day of free agency, the Bruins' signing of Jeannot made him the seventh-most expensive unrestricted free agent signing of a player switching teams this summer. His $17 million, in case you were wondering, trails only Ryan Lindgren ($18 million), Cody Ceci ($18 million), Mikael Granlund ($21 million), Vladislav Gavrikov ($49 million), Nikolaj Ehlers ($51 million), and Mitch Marner ($96 million).

And with the ink drying on Jeannot's contract, some additional details on his five-year pact with the Bruins have started to emerge.

Most notable when it comes to Jeannot's contract with Boston, which will come with a $3.4 million cap hit, is that he does possess a full no-trade clause for the first two years of the deal. But even the full no-trade expires, Jeannot will have somewhat favorable trade protection, as it becomes a 15-team no-trade in year three before dropping to a seven-team no-trade in the fourth year, and without any sort of trade protection in the fifth and final year.

Jeannot's full no-trade clause in 2025-26 actually makes him the only forward in the NHL to possess a full no-trade clause while failing to put up more than 14 points (he had 13 points for the Kings last year) while also appearing in at least 60 games a year ago. The three closest players to him in that respect all (at least) doubled his production in 2024-25, and all got their no-movement clauses/no-trade clauses while playing for the Oilers (Adam Henrique, Andrew Mangiapane, and new Bruins winger Viktor Arvidsson).

Giving Jeannot a no-trade clause also made him the 11th different Bruins player on the roster to have some form of trade protection, and that number will jump to 12 next summer when Jeremy Swayman's no-movement goes into effect.

Given Jeannot's production, his season-ending groin injury, and the way his game has trended downward in multiple seasons now, it's an almost unfathomable level of trade protection. But Jeannot had plenty of suitors, according to Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman, and the Bruins were seemingly determined to go above and beyond to win the bidding war.

"The one thing that I think happened with Boston was I heard that there were like 10 teams after [Jeannot]," Friedman said on the most recent episode of the '32 Thoughts' podcast. "I heard the competition for Jeannot was fierce. I heard the Rangers were in it, I heard Ottawa was in it, it fits with Toronto. I think there were a lot of teams after him and I had heard initially the Kings' offer to him was under $2 million per season the first time."

Whether it made legitimate sense for the Bruins to enter the Jeannot bidding war given where they are right now is its own debate. Especially for a Boston club that was bottom-five in pretty much every offensive category a year ago and arguably got thinner on that front in free agency.

But for the Bruins, the hope appears to be that the presence of Jeannot will allow one of Boston's 2024 big-money additions, Nikita Zadorov, to do more of the stuff that put him on the club's radar for a $30 million deal in 2024.

"I think they felt last time Zadorov was fighting or going after guys too much, [so] I think they brought Jeannot in to be a little bigger, a little meaner, and so Zadorov didn't have to do some of this stuff as much," Friedman noted.

Given the campaign that Jeannot had, there's a whole lot riding on his first year in Boston. At this point, it feels unlikely that Jeannot is ever going to match what he did in 2021-22 when he put up a career-high 24 goals and 41 points for the Predators. The Preds, Lightning, and Kings all moving on from him would lead you to believe that they've all taken a long, hard look under the hood and realized that version of Jeannot is not coming back.

But with this kind of trade protection, this contract proving not to be an anchor on Boston's books will be a must for the Black and Gold out of the gate.