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Wheeler’s agent expecting word Thursday 07.28.10 at 6:48 pm ET
By DJ Bean

It appears there will be no news regarding Blake Wheeler‘s arbitration case with the Bruins on Wednesday. Agent Matt Keator indicated to multiple outlets, including WEEI.com, that he is not expecting the arbiter to reveal the right wing’s awarded 2010-2011 salary until Thursday. A decision must come within 48 hours of the hearing, and given that the two sides met Tuesday from 9 a.m. to noon, word should emerge Thursday morning.

Upon the arbiter delivering the award, the Bruins can either pay and thus retain Wheeler, keep him buy out a veteran, or walk away and let the 6-foot-3 forward become a free agent.

Wheeler is just the second player with whom general manager Peter Chiarelli has gone to arbitration. He walked away from defenseman David Tanabe in 2006. Tanabe later had his career ended by a concussion.

Chiarelli and Wheeler’s camp tried to avoid a hearing and held a meeting late Monday night that also included assistant general manager Don Sweeney. All attempts at coming to a deal were obviously unsuccessful, but it seems highly unlikely, even given the team’s tight cap situation (just over $12,000 in space), that they would walk away from the 23-year-old.

Wheeler, who spent last week on his honeymoon, scored 18 goals and had 20 assists for 38 points in ’09-’10, his second NHL season. He earned $2.8 million. Though the team will get $3.5 million of temporary cap relief from Marco Sturm‘s knee injury to open the season, the Bruins will almost certainly need to make a more permanent move to accomodate to Wheeler’s forthcoming salary, expected to be in the low-to-mid $2 million range, and sign rookie center Tyler Seguin.

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  • Slugo

    I don’t understand the fascination with Wheeler. I keep hearing how he is good on the pk. Let’s see, to be a good penalty killer, you should be tenacious and physical. Wheeler is neither, he’s 6’5 and has a long reach. That’s it. He’s a floater without a real scoring touch. With Wideman gone, we know who the new whipping boy is going to be.

  • Rob

    I think the fascination with Wheeler is simple. He is only 23 years old and has the phyical attributes to mold into a dominant hockey player. For his first two years in the league to average 20 goals is not short task. Granted he is somewhat streaky and had a down year compared to his first, but with his young age I think it would be a poor decision to let him walk because his cieling is high.

  • deano

    I agree, Slugo hit it right on the head. Wheeler is an absolute floater, he constantly is just standing around the opponent’s blue line on the breakout, he never comes back to support the pass on the side boards. He is too afraid to take the hit to move the puck. The bruins struggled all year because the defensemen were trying to make 40′ passes up to the wingers on the breakout. Those long passes are low % plays and give the other team the opportunity to regroup around their own blue line and enter the bruins zone with the puck, speed and numbers. Just watch the last four games against philly and count how many goals were scored by a regrouping philly team in the transition game. Wheeler (and Ghost Ryder) get away with floating so badly because they are so far up the wing that you cannot actually see them on the tv screen, only when I was at the games did I notice it. I like wheeler’s potential, he certainly seems to have good hands and some scoring touch, and a good large frame but he certainly lacks in toughness, positional awareness and mostly hustle. I do not know what they should do with him, but he is certainly worth keeping for low to mid 2 million (pay cut from the 2.8m last year) for next season as his upside and production merits that type of contract.

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