A pair of veteran blueliners will hit the open market tomorrow.
Matt Bartkowski, who’s played in 131 games over the last five years with Boston, has been told he won’t be re-signed by the club while Rangers rearguard Matt Hunwick, a veteran of nearly 350 NHL contests, will also go to market after New York passed on an extension.
Hunwick, 30, scored 11 points in 55 games for the Rangers last year and made six playoff appearances. The former Bruin and Avalanche played on a one-year, $600,000 deal in ’14-15 and could net a similar contract in free agency after what was, all things considered, not a bad effort in his lone year as a Blueshirt.
Bartkowski, 27, played last year on a $1.25 million deal but struggled to impress, scoring just four points in 47 games. He was briefly floated as a trade candidate at the deadline but, with no takers, he was left to play out the string with Boston.
It’ll be interesting to see what kind of traction Bartkowski gets on the open market. He’s still relatively young and, in ’13-14, he scored a career-high 18 points in 64 games and made eight playoff appearances for the Bruins.