Bruins general manager Don Sweeney and his staff has their work cut out for them this summer.

Facing a cap crunch unlike anything this franchise has seen before (it honestly makes 2014 look like a breeze), the Bruins are going flip any and every couch cushion at both Warrior Ice Arena and TD Garden in search of relief.

Thursday will come with the Bruins’ first chance to flip those cushions, too, as the NHL’s buyout window will officially open for the B’s and the rest of the league.

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• While a buyout is often considered a last resort, Sweeney and the Bruins do have experience pulling the trigger on this front, having done it two times during Sweeney’s eight-year tenure as general manager.

  Sweeney’s first buyout came back in 2016 when the team decided to cut ties with Dennis Seidenberg and the $7 million in real money that Seidenberg had left on the final two years of his contract. The Bruins added another buyout to their books a year later and with Jimmy Hayes, as the Bruins bought out the final year of Hayes’ contract, which would have come with a $2.3 million cap hit had he remained on the roster.

  In the case of both players, the buyouts were only explored after trade options failed to materialize, and it appears as if the Bruins could go down a similar road this time around.

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  BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS – MAY 26: General Manager Don Sweeney of the Boston Bruins speaks during Media Day ahead of the 2019 NHL Stanley Cup Final at TD Garden on May 26, 2019 in Boston, Massachusetts. (Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

• When looking at the Bruins’ potential buyout candidates, the first name that comes up is absolutely, 100 percent, without a doubt in my mind defenseman Mike Reilly.

  In the middle year of a three-year, $9 million extension signed in 2021, Reilly skated in just 10 games with the Bruins during the 2022-23 regular season. The Bruins placed the 29-year-old Reilly on waivers on two separate occasions, and he cleared and reported to Providence both times. Given the fact that Reilly is certainly a capable, mid-tier NHL defenseman by all measurements, that confirmed that absolutely nobody was looking to add term to their books.

  While in Providence, the Bruins did what they could to showcase Reilly to the rest of the league (and it honestly looked as if they could make a trade happen for a hot minute there given the in-person scouting and tenor around the situation), but nobody bit. Again, the term seemed to be a legitimate obstacle.

  Instead, Reilly spent almost the entire year with the P-Bruins, and put up seven goals and 26 points in 36 games with Providence. All while carrying a $1.875 million ‘buried contract’ hit on the Bruins’ books during that AHL run.

  The Bruins simply can’t afford that kind of hit on their books in 2023-24.

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  Mar 15, 2022; Chicago, Illinois, USA; Boston Bruins defenseman Mike Reilly (6) practices before the game against the Chicago Blackhawks at the United Center. (Mike Dinovo/USA TODAY Sports)

• The Bruins’ preference would be to get something for Reilly if they could. Again, he’s a capable defenseman in this league by any and all measurements, and there should be a market for his services. Even if that team’s goal is to pull off an old fashioned pump-and-dump with him at the 2024 trade deadline.

  But finding a taker for Reilly has proven to be wildly difficult (impossible, actually), and it won’t get any easier for the Bruins with the entire league knowing the cap nightmare that the club finds themselves in amid seemingly unlikely hopes of retaining pending free agent Tyler Bertuzzi.

  In essence, any team that does the Bruins a solid and offers to take Reilly off their hands via trade will want something extra. That could be a pick (the Bruins have traded too many of those as is) or a prospect that the Bruins would almost certainly want to keep given their rather barren pool.

  That makes a buyout of the final year his contract an almost no brainer for Sweeney.

  Should the Bruins move forward with a buyout of the final year of Reilly’s contract (he’s due $4 million in real cash and has a $3 million cap hit), the Bruins will save $2.666 million on their 2023-24 cap, with Reilly’s buyout counting against the B’s books for a manageable $333,334 figure.

  The following season, the dead cap hit of a Reilly buyout would jump to $1.333 million. But the 2024-25 Bruins are currently projected to have $29 million in cap space (and that’s without factoring in what’s expected to be a steep leap in the cap ceiling), making that penalty much more palatable for the Bruins.

  Barring a last second change on the trade market, buying out Reilly feels like a borderline inevitability for the Bruins.

  Acquired ahead of the 2021 trade deadline in a trade that saw the Bruins send a 2022 third-round pick to the Senators, Reilly put up four goals and 26 points in 95 games with the Bruins over the course of three seasons.

  The left-shooting defenseman has recorded 12 goals and 98 points in 339 career NHL games between the Wild, Canadiens, Senators, and Bruins.

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  MONTREAL, QC – APRIL 24: Mike Reilly #6 of the Boston Bruins skates against the Montreal Canadiens during the third period at Centre Bell on April 24, 2022 in Montreal, Canada. (Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images)

• And while Reilly is an obvious one, he’s also not the only left-shooting defenseman you would consider as a potential buyout candidate for the Bruins when this window opens.

  While I’d put him way, way, way lower than Reilly on the ‘this will almost certainly happen’ scale, you have to wonder if the Bruins explore a potential buyout involving the final year of Derek Forbort’s contract.

  Entering the final year of a three-year, $9 million contract signed in 2021, the 31-year-old Forbort has done just about everything the Bruins have asked him to do. He’s done the dirty work of being a penalty-killing moose, and his 4.83 blocks per 60 rank first among the Bruins and 51st among all NHL defensemen with at least 120 games played over the last two seasons. But Forbort is extremely limited in regards to his ceiling with the Bruins. Top-pairing assignments opposite Charlie McAvoy are out of his range as the early portion of the 2021-22 season proved, and skating with Brandon Carlo on Boston’s second pairing creates a pairing that simply isn’t mobile enough in 2023.

  So, when you’re in a cap crunch like the Bruins are, paying who is almost certainly one of your third-pairing defenseman $3 million becomes a bit tougher to swallow. And it’s an example of the Bruins ‘no stone left unturned’ mindset that’ll have to be there in regards to creating cap space for the 2023-24 campaign.

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  Dec 11, 2022; Las Vegas, Nevada, USA; Boston Bruins defenseman Derek Forbort (28) warms up before a game against the Vegas Golden Knights at T-Mobile Arena. (Stephen R. Sylvanie/USA TODAY Sports)

• It does feel as if the Bruins are going to enter this offseason having to decide between Forbort and Matt Grzelcyk, as the cost-cutting measures will almost certainly force the Bruins to fill one of their roles with a cheaper player, be it Jakub Zboril with his $1.137 million cap hit or 2020 second-round pick Mason Lohrei and his entry-level contract.

  (By the way, the benefits to a Grzelcyk buyout are basically nonexistent from a dollar standpoint, in case you’re curious. Just not a worthwhile endeavor. Plus, with his skill-set, he should be able to fetch you a relatively solid return should you decide that he’s the odd man out on the left side depth chart.)

  My guess would be that the Bruins would try to explore a trade involving Forbort before committing to a buyout. There’s plenty of teams with left-side openings, and plenty of teams that need penalty-killing help.

  But should the Bruins decide a buyout involving Forbort needs to be explored, it’s worth noting that it would create $2.333 million in savings and a $666,667 cap hit in 2023-24. In 2024-25, the savings would drop down to zero, while the dead cap hit would check in at $1.166 million.

  Forbort, who scored a career-high five goals with the Bruins this past season, has tallied nine goals and 26 points, along with 188 blocked shots and 239 hits, in 130 games with the Bruins over the last two seasons.

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  Nov 29, 2022; Boston, Massachusetts, USA; Boston Bruins defenseman Derek Forbort (28) watches the play during the second period against the Tampa Bay Lightning at TD Garden. (Bob DeChiara/USA TODAY Sports)

• Off the NHL roster but with minor cap implications all the same, it’ll also be interesting to see if Sweeney and the Bruins try to officially bury the Mitchell Miller nightmare by way of a buyout.

  A member of the Bruins for about 56 hours, nobody is quite sure how the Bruins and Miller will officially sever ties. As of right now, they’ve done that in playing time only. Miller, a potential star prospect whose NHL career was rightfully derailed by stories of unforgivable bullying of a developmentally-disabled classmate, had barely touched down in Providence before the organization made the decision to reverse course on bringing him in. It was also worth mentioning that the Bruins did not get approval from the NHL before signing him (and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman made that known), and the AHL wouldn’t outright say whether or not he was eligible to play in their league.

  It was the mess of all messes for the Bruins, and you know the Bruins are dying to put this one behind them and get the Miller contract off their books. Or the contract slot, at the very least. It’s safe to say that no team is going to touch Miller with a 10-foot pole, so a trade is absolutely out of the question. And if the sides aren’t going to go through the grievance process, a buyout of Miller’s contract is the next best thing for the B’s to explore.

  Signed to the richest possible contract he could’ve signed as an entry-level player, buying out the final two years of Miller’s contract would create a four-year buyout on the Bruins’ books. They’d have $645,833 in savings in both 2023-24 and 2024-25, but get dinged for $129,167 in dead cap hits in both 2025-26 and 2026-27.

  Ask the Bruins and they’ll tell you that it’s worth it just to put this completely, 100 percent avoidable nightmare behind them.

  (I mean, seriously, the fact that we’re even talking about this with Miller is pretty insane and will always blow my mind. There were countless people in the organization that told the front office not to do this and told them there was no way they could possibly make this work. Those people were right, and in record time.)

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  MONTREAL, QUEBEC – JULY 07: President Cam Neely and General Manager Don Sweeney of the Boston Bruins look on during Round One of the 2022 Upper Deck NHL Draft at Bell Centre on July 07, 2022. (Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

• The Bruins are currently projected to enter the 2023 offseason with $4.9 million in cap space, and with just 13 skaters and one goaltender signed to their NHL roster.

  The NHL salary cap, meanwhile, is only expected to go up about $1 million, as the players still need to pay off about $70 million in escrow from the NHL and NHLPA’s agreement made during the COVID pandemic.

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