Did Don Sweeney Reject Trade Offers For Jeremy Swayman?

So much talk leading into and after the NHL Trade Deadline this past Friday has surrounded Boston Bruins goalie Linus Ullmark, but what about Jeremy Swayman?

On March 4, Sportsnet NHL Insider Elliotte Friedman reported that Swayman and the Boston Bruins had begun talks on a new contract extension for the 25-year-old goalie, who is 21-6-8 with a 2.45 GAA and a .922 save percentage. As always seems to be the case in the world of social media, that turned into Friedman reporting that the team and Swayman were ‘close’ on a new extension, with one Boston sports talk station actually saying a contract with term and money was in place.

“I just want to say something about this,” Friedman said on March 5, clarifying what he said before that. “I don’t know where this got so out of control yesterday, but the only thing I wrote is that they’ve been talking to him, and that is true. They had talked to him. I certainly didn’t intend to create the impression that anything was getting close, and I can’t find where I actually said that. So I’m going to say at this point in time that I didn’t say that.

So, I want to make that very clear. I don’t think the Bruins and Swayman are close on an extension, but I do think they have talked about it. So that’s all I’ll say about that, and I just wanted to clear that up.”

Jeremy Swayman, by the way, is playing out a one-year, $3.4 million contract that was awarded to him via arbitration last August.

While Friedman didn’t give an update on contract talks between the Boston Bruins and Swayman in the latest 32 Thoughts podcast that dropped on Monday, he did say that he believes Bruins general manager Don Sweeney turned down trade offers for Swayman heading into the NHL trade deadline.

“I also think that there were some teams in the East that Boston was talking to potentially about some other situations (aside from Ullmark) and I think there was more than one,” Friedman said. “I think there were a couple, and I don’t know if there were ones he could’ve blocked or not. I believe in at least one case, the deal fell apart. I believe it’s also possible that the team that was talking to Boston said, ‘Well, we’d rather do Swayman,’ and Boston just shut that down and said, ‘That’s not happening.'”

While Friedman doesn’t expect the Bruins to change their mind on keeping and locking up Swayman on a long-term contract, he does believe the trade discussions on Ullmark are far from over.

“There’s definitely some conversations that happened over the last couple of weeks that I think will be revisited in the summer or after the season is over. I don’t think this is over. I think Ullmark realizes that, and the other thing too is I would assume that at some point – I don’t know when; every team’s different. For some teams, it’s July 1, June 30, whatever it is, but I don’t know when Ullmark has to submit his list, but that’s going to be part of this too. So, I don’t think these conversations are over.”