Who blinks first?
Would it really be training camp without a little bit of intrigue?!
Sure, it probably goes beyond “a little bit” at this point, but training camp kicked off yesterday with off-ice activities, and it ended up being off-ice conversations that generated the most headlines.
While some (myself included) anticipated/wondered whether there might be a Jeremy Swayman contract announcement in the works Wednesday morning, that ended up not being the case.
Instead, it was GM Don Sweeney meeting with the media to discuss summer activities, the best places to go apple picking in the Greater Boston area…you know, standard stuff.
By now, most of you have covered the Swayman-related comments from Sweeney, so I won’t rehash them in great detail.
The basics:
- It’s not true that negotiations ever stopped or that there were weeks-long gaps in communication between the sides.
- Sweeney maintains that “constant communication, dialog, finding common ground” will be how the negotiations reach a conclusion, similar to how (he referenced) they went with Charlie McAvoy, David Pastrnak, and Brandon Carlo.
- Sweeney is “optimistic,” because he thinks they’ll “find a landing spot before December 1.”
Surely that makes you all feel better, right? Right???
There were some other interesting notes from yesterday’s availabilities with Sweeney and Jim Montgomery, including:
- Sweeney and Montgomery both agreeing that the Bruins’ power play was a “bit of an Achilles” in the latter portion of the season; I think it’s fair to assume the implication was an Achilles heel, not just a regular Achilles, like a Greek demigod of a power play.
- Sweeney mentioned that he believed Elias Lindholm playing in the “bumper” position will help with some of the power play issues.
- On Fabian Lysell, Sweeney acknowledged that he isn’t right for a fourth-line/energy role, essentially saying his game isn’t suited for that (which is true). I won’t put words in his mouth, but it kind of sounded to me like a “he’s going to have to earn his spot further up” or something.
- Sweeney alluded to the fact that Matt Poitras can play in Providence this year, if needed (as opposed to the “NHL or juniors” situation last season).
- Montgomery noted that this season, he’d like to see the team play faster, hang onto the puck more, and spend more time time in the offensive zone; he mentioned that he thought they spent too much time in their own end last season.
There will be two on-ice sessions at Warrior Arena today, one at 10 AM and one at noon.
We’ll hear from Montgomery again tomorrow, along with a handful of players.
I still plan to round out the player ratings, but at this point, it’ll likely be through more collective posts.
As I think we saw earlier this week, most of us are well past last season at this point.
However, I also want to respect the time people put into doing the ratings, so we’ll follow through on those.
What’s on tap for today?