Sweeney covered a lot of ground in a media availability today.
Fresh off of a frustrating 3-2 OT loss to Anaheim on Saturday night, Bruins GM Don Sweeney met with the media after practice today.
He covered a lot of ground in the media availability, providing bad news about Hampus Lindholm, an update on Charlie McAvoy, and more.
Hampus Lindholm is “likely” done for the season
Out since November, it appears that we won’t see Hampus Lindholm again this season.
Updates on Lindholm’s recovery have gotten more and more nebulous, so it’s not terribly surprising to hear that he won’t return.
“Hampus, unfortunately, is unlikely to return for the rest of the season,” Sweeney said. “He had a significant knee injury, fractured his patella, and had surgery. There was no real definitive timeline. I think we were pretty open about that, and really didn’t want to peg a timeline on it, because of the complexity of the injury.”
Sweeney added that Lindholm is having a follow-up appointment next to remove “hardware” that was causing issues during his rehab.
Ideally, Lindholm is at 100% with a full summer’s rest.
No timeline for Charlie McAvoy
Sweeney didn’t have much new to offer on McAvoy’s status, other than confirming that he’s home and recovering.
He did add that it didn’t seem like McAvoy would need an additional surgery for the injury that led to the infection, but that remains to be seen.
“I don’t think so at this time, but again, we’ll let the healing take place, and…it’ll be reevaluated,” he said.
Sweeney didn’t take the bait on whether or not the team blamed the Team USA staff for McAvoy’s issues, refusing to get into it at all.
“The care that Charlie received here is what’s most important from the standpoint of where his health is at now,” he said. “That’s all that really matters. Dr. Asnis’ team, as I stated, did a great job.”
A different approach at the trade deadline
As we all know, Sweeney has taken plenty of swings at the trade deadline in recent years.
Some have been successes, while others have been “swing and a miss.”
This year, we probably won’t see many, if any, fireworks when it comes to acquisitions.
“I think we’ll take a much more cautious approach as we approach the deadline,” he said. “That being said, if there are opportunities to improve our team now and certainly moving forward…we will look at all opportunities to improve our team now, but more importantly, moving forward.”
It doesn’t take much reading between the lines to take that as “we’re not going to be buyers,” which isn’t really news.
Sweeney added the obvious caveat of him taking calls, seeing what comes up, “maybe there’s interest in some of our veteran guys,” all of that stuff.
Brad Marchand’s status remains unclear
While the Bruins have a few guys who may be on the block over the next couple of weeks, the status of their captain is likely to be the most intriguing talking point.
We were obviously never going to get a clear answer on Marchand’s future at a random media briefing, but it’s fair to say the situation remains up in the air.
“We’ve been in negotiations with Brad and communicating with him throughout the year,” Sweeney said. “We’ll have to have a conversation now that the 4 Nations is over and sit down with Brad and his representatives and have a clearer path in the next two weeks as to what his final outcome will be.”
Sweeney added that Marchand being a lifelong Bruin has “always been my ultimate goal,” so…we’ll see, I guess.
And that was pretty much it.
Sweeney added that he has a pretty good idea of the where most of his pending UFAs and RFAs sit and that they have different timelines for each of those players.
He noted that Marchand’s situation was different, which I infer to mean Marchand is probably the only one who might get offered a new deal during the season.
Unsurprisingly, Sweeney was noncommittal on Joe Sacco’s status, calling it “a conversation for the offseason.”