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Linus Ullmark discusses his B's future at break-up day |
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Ty Anderson
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As far as break-up days go, Bruins goaltender Linus Ullmark brought about a different energy to a rather somber-but-hopeful locker room at Brighton’s Warrior Ice Arena.
Rather than lingering around and waiting for a member of the PR staff to announce that he was available for an interview, Ullmark himself announced that Linus Ullmark was now available at his stall. Ullmark even went the extra distance and moved his own equipment bag off the ground and into an empty stall so that everybody had room to be in on his scrum and hear what he had to say.
And with a smile on his face, Ullmark talked like a man blissfully unaware (though we know that’s not the case) of the uncertainty that’s surrounded his name since the 2024 NHL trade deadline passed.
“My future here? I got one more year [left on my contract],” Ullmark, sporting a massive grin, said when asked if he’s thought about his future with the Bruins. “I’m very excited about what’s to come. It’s going to be a heck of a summer.
“I’m very motivated, mixed in with some revenge, obviously, some inspiration as well. But most of all, the excitement of, what’s to come. So, yeah, I felt that obviously everybody thinks for me personally, that it was a year that I wasn’t as good as I was [the year] prior. And for me, though, it’s all about personal growth, and I learned a lot about myself and different aspects of the game and also how I am as a human being.”
That wasn’t what we meant by that, though, and Ullmark knew it.
By now, it’s no secret that the Bruins had discussions involving Ullmark at the 2024 NHL trade deadline. And though it’s been both believed and reported that Ullmark opted to use his trade protection to block a potential move out of Boston (likely to Los Angeles), Jeremy Swayman‘s emergence as a true No. 1 during the 2024 postseason has only put more doubt in regards to Ullmark’s future entering the final year of a four-year, $20 million contract.
“Oh, you want the juicy stuff?” Ullmark asked. “You got to catch me a little bit later [and] do an exclusive if you want to get to that part of that. So, it’s hard to not hear [the rumors]. You can’t isolate yourself because then you would live in a shed in the woods, and you’d show up for practice sometimes. But I mean, I have you guys. You’re always going to ask questions. You want to know what’s happening and you’re going to ask questions, obviously, to get to the answers that you might want. But I’m not going to give you any good answers other than that.”
Still, Ullmark was more than aware of the noise.
“That’s also one of the things that was new for me this year. I’ve never been a part of any trade talks before, so that was a new experience,” Ullmark admitted. “Was it hard? Yeah, it was hard because you’re very comfortable where you are. You don’t want to move when you feel like you’re playing well and you have the team and your teammates.
“So with that popping up now, I’m not the only one that has been in trade talks, obviously. There were other goaltenders out there in the league as well that had a lot of rumors with that they might get dealt and there might not be any opportunities for any of them. And for me, it’s above my pay grade as well, really.
“If I could, I’m probably going to say the same thing as everybody else: I want to stay and I’m going to stay. But yeah, we’ll live in a world where in professional sports we’ve got to deal with the hand you’ve been dealt. Like I said, I have one more year. I wouldn’t want anything else than to come back here, and get a little bit of a revenge tour."
There are answers within those answers from the 30-year-old Ullmark.
He clearly doesn’t want to leave Boston. Both for his own feelings when it comes to being a Bruin, as well as his family’s wishes. And if he has the ability to control that — which he clearly did during the 2024 NHL trade deadline — he was going to utilize that to provide himself with the result he wanted. Which, again, is clearly being a Bruin and being at what he considers home here in Boston.
“I would say it’s more on the personal side,” Ullmark said of his reasons for wanting to stay with the Bruins. “We felt that ever since we came to Boston, we’ve been embraced by not only the city, but the team and the people that work throughout the organization. Like, everybody has been so nice, caring and lovable. And we felt that ever since our day one. And that makes you feel at home, that makes you want to stay there. And when you have that good thing behind you, you don’t want to move just because you have to move or something. You want to stay.
“That’s just what it comes down to. It doesn’t really matter how it goes on the ice. If you’re feeling that your life is taken care of off the side, and that your family’s well and they’re thriving and enjoying their time in school and with friends, you don’t wanna uproot them just because. I think that goes to anyone that has kids and families. It doesn’t matter what kind of a job you have, if you feel that, ‘You know what? I’m very comfortable and I like it here,’ you don’t really want to move at that point.”
Based on that rationale, Ullmark does not sound like a man who is eager to waive his no-trade clause this summer. It will hardly get any easier for the Bruins to move him to a team on that list, too, as Ullmark’s trade protection drops from a 16-team no-trade list to a… 15-team no-trade list next season.
And Ullmark, for what it’s worth, did not feel like disclosing much of anything to me when it came to the details of that no-trade list.
“I mean, I have my list and my list is there,” Ullmark told me. “We’ve worked very hard for it. There’s a reason for why it’s there. And that’s something that the players before me worked really hard to get to the point where we have that luxury, and there’s a reason why it’s there, and there’s a reason why certain teams are on there. And there might be personal things, but that’s up to each and every player to have and what it comes from my personal things.
“That’s something for me, my family and, my agent to deal with and take care of. And I don’t have any obligations to share the reasonings or the reasons that I have certain teams on that list.”
Internally and externally, there’s been a belief that Ullmark does not want to waive his no-trade clause to go to a team in the Western Conference and that his no-trade clause involves a lot of teams that play in the West. The thought there is that being in the East makes it easier for Ullmark and his family to go back to Sweden in the offseason.
But it’s not as simple as a geography decision for Ullmark, as he revealed without outright naming — or confirming at the very least — any teams that may or may not be on that list.
“It all depends,” Ullmark said when asked about the potential geographical limitations involved in his no-trade. “It’s very hard. I mean, like I said, we don’t really have all these luxuries to really tell like, ‘I don’t want to be at certain areas.’ And there might be other things as well throughout your career that let’s say, for example, you have one team that would be on the West Coast that is really, really bad and you have them on your trade list. But then all of a sudden, maybe three years later, they’re not [bad]. They might be a contender.
“You can just look at Edmonton or whatever and look at those teams that might have been really bad, but now are really good. You might want to waive at that point, but you can’t really think about that, you know, in advance [like] how are these teams going to be in three or four years? You can’t really look into your little [crystal] ball in the future and say, ‘Hey, this is what it’s going to be, I’m going to go there’ and whatever because it might go to shit as well.”
In other words, don't expect it to get any easier for Sweeney and the Bruins to find a palatable deal if it involves a team that isn't on Ullmark's approved list this summer.
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