Boston Bruins and Nashville Predators Looking To Fill Holes This Summer
Dave Pagnotta of the Fourth Period joined Bill Pito on the NHL Network and was asked if Juuse Saros or Linus Ullmark would be with their team on opening night of next season and what else both Nashville and Boston are looking for.
** NHLRumors.com transcriptions
NHL Rumors: Jakob Chychrun, and Nikita Zadorov
Pidto: “Alright, so we ask, any chance Saros and Ullmark remain with their current teams before opening night next season?
Pagnotta: “I’d be more surprised if Saros is still there to be honest because of how high they are with respect to, the Predators are, with respect to Askarov.
The Bruins have, they don’t have a ton of cap space. They’ve got a little wiggle room but they’ve got some holes they want to fill. Nashville has a lot more cap flexibility in terms of potentially adding to their roster.
They’re team has checked in, they want to add a front. They’re a team that’s checked in on Martin Necas. They want to add their blue. Brett Pesce is a player that if he hits July one is a free agent, they’re going to look to add and certainly inquire about his availability. They even tried to trade for him last offseason from Carolina. So I certainly looked at Nashville looking at a guy like Pesce.
But from Boston’s perspective, you know, Don Sweeney made it known he wants to add another score to his lineup and they’re going to have a couple holes on defense with some guys in the bottom pair leaving. Derek Forbort‘s going to test the market and others.
NHL Rumors: Shane Pinto, and Linus Ullmark
So if you can move out Ullmark, free up a little additional cap space in that $5 million and then maybe either address it immediately, another hole, or use that cap space to fill that void elsewhere. I think that’s something that Bruins would like to do. They’re exploring it. But Ullmark holds a lot of cards here with a pretty lengthy trade, no-trade list. So it’ll be interesting to see how the Bruins navigate this over the next 10 days or so.
