Sportsnet: Elliotte Friedman and Jeff Marek on the 32 Thoughts: The Podcast – Tort’s Tantrum Fallout & the Golden LTIR episode on Linus Ullmark and the Boston Bruins.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Marek: “Okay, let me fly through a couple of trades here. A couple of interesting notes from trade deadline. And listen, I’m going to focus initially on someone who wasn’t traded and that’s Linus Ullmark of the Boston Bruins.
Now, after the victory against the Pittsburgh Penguins, there was that interesting interplay between him and Swayman. Where Swayman essentially said to him, you stayed, you’re here, you’re one of us still, the big goalie hus. Just your thoughts on the Linus Ullmark situation around trade deadline Friedge. There were many that thought that he was gone.”
NHL Rumors: The Bruins and Linus Ullmark, and the Sabres and Zemgus Girgensons
Friedman: “I think he thought it too. I heard it was a really emotional week for him behind the scenes. He made it very clear he didn’t want to leave. But I think he was expecting that he would be traded.
You know the thing is here is that I always say this, it’s a player’s right. If you get it in your contract, you have a no-trade clause, it is your right to say “no.” And I believe he, he exercised, and especially in the middle of a season that you know, and it’s potentially far away from where you are, I completely understand that.
And you know, the report has been LA. I’ve heard nothing that makes me dispute it. You know, obviously, he hasn’t commented on that and Don Sweeney hasn’t said anything. And I’ve heard the Kings are not very happy, because that leads to questions about who potentially was involved.
Marek: “Yeah.”
Friedman: “But you know, I’ve heard nothing that makes me disbelieve that LA was the team.
But I also think that there were some teams in the East that Boston was talking to. Potentially about some other situations and I think there was more than one. I think there were a couple and I don’t know if they were ones he could have blocked or not. I believe in at least one case the deal fell apart. I think it’s also possible the team that was talking to Boston, said well, we’d rather do Swayman and Boston just shot that down. Said that’s not that’s not happening.
But there’s definitely some conversations about Ullmark that happened over the last couple of weeks that I think will be revisited in the summer. And, or after the season’s over. I don’t think this is over. I think Ullmark realizes that.
And you know, the other thing too is I would assume at some point, I don’t know when, like every team is different. Some teams it’s July 1, June 30, whatever it is, but I don’t know when Ullmark has to submit his list. But you know, that’s going to be part of this too.
And, you know, Boston, I don’t think these conversations are over. I would guess that Boston was one of the most disappointed teams at the deadline. I think they, you know, they got (Pat) Maroon. They got (Andrew) Peeke from Columbus. And people told me that Peeke is a better player than you know what happened to him this year. He just got caught in a numbers game in Columbus.
But I think Boston would be one of the more disappointed teams and that they couldn’t do some of the things that they wanted to do. And, but I think Boston is going to be a really interesting team in the offseason. There’s there’s no question about that to me.