Blake Wheeler makes the Bruins roster?

Mike McMahon and is reporting that Joe Finley's favorite dance partner from las season apparently has made the Boston Bruins opening day roster. Then while reading the Boston Globe web page it appears that this might still be in question. I guess there are two sides to every story depending on what publication you read.

Here is what Steve Conroy had to say about Blake Wheeler while it is interesting that Blake has made the Bruins, but after watching him play in the WCHA for three years and compare Wheeler to Milan Lucic is a stretch and I believe a disservice, are we to believe that Wheeler grew a pair over the off season? Having watched almost every game the Bruins played last season Lucic has been compared to Cam Neely by some. I don't know? I am going to be cynical when reading that comparison until I see actual visual evidence that this is the case. I would also be interested in seeing how Blake handles himself in a fight against an NHL player. So it will be interesting to see what happens in the coming days.

But the rookie (Wheeler) has made an impression.

“He’s shown a work ethic, skating, use of his size, every day getting better, willingness to learn. There’s a lot of similarities in that sense between him and (Milan) Lucic. They work hard and they’re sponges,” Chiarelli said. “They’re both big bodies but they’re different players. He works the puck along the boards like Lucic. He doesn’t have that nasty edge that Lucic has, but he can make plays with speed. I don’t want to put too much on his shoulders because we haven’t made our final decisions, but he’s done well.”

Sometimes I think the new CBA is a a cumbersome piece of paper that needs a lawyer to translate some of the language that is in it. I think it is time for the Bruins to dump the under performing, over paid slug named Peter Schaefer. In retrospect this was a horrible off season pick up from last season and it is time for the Bruins to cut the dead weight. Schaefer spent a lot of time producing little in the way of offense and spent a good chunk of time on the fourth line if he played he also spent a good chunk of time sitting in the stands.

By Fluto Shinzawa --- Globe Staff October 7, 2008 It's one of the reasons former top-five pick Blake Wheeler, despite being one of the Bruins' best forwards in camp, is on the bubble between Boston and Providence.
Wheeler's base salary is capped at $875,000. But with bonuses figured in, his annual cap hit for this year and next could be $2.825 million - standard pay for a skilled forward selected fifth overall in the 2004 draft. In comparison, the annual cap number for Pittsburgh's Evgeni Malkin, the No. 2 pick in 2004, was $2.85 million before the Penguins extended the center.

Anaheim, facing a similar cap crunch, assigned forward Bobby Ryan, the No. 2 pick behind Sidney Crosby in 2005, to its AHL club in Iowa. Ryan had performed well in camp, but his cap number (just south of $2 million per year) was a factor.

So while Wheeler's number is in line with his comparables, the 22-year-old's hit is putting the squeeze on the cap-tight Bruins. They must decide what to do with the underperforming Peter Schaefer and his $2.1 million cap hit, far too steep for a player who was a fourth-liner and a healthy scratch for part of last season.