Felger to the Bruins: Go get Brady Tkachuk

The 2024 Stanley Cup Finals will be the Edmonton Oilers facing off against Matthew Tkachuk and the Florida Panthers. On Monday's Felger and Mazz, Felger said that he'd be rooting for Tkachuk and the Panthers and how he hopes that the Bruins will make an attempt to trade for Matthew Tkachuk's younger brother, Brady.

Felger says go get Brady Tkachuk

Felger: I want to see Matthew Tkachuk win. I do. And it just sort of boldens my wish for the Bruins to go get his brother. Go get Brady Tkachuk here. I don't know if Ottawa would be of a mind to get rid of him. He just signed a big long extension there. He's got a big eight-year honker of a contract. But you know, force your way out like your brother did. And I know Matthew's contract was up and he told Calgary he wasn't re-signing, that's how it all went down, right? Something like that. So Matthew sort of forced his way out. That’s what Brady's going to have to do. But tell Brady to force his way out and get that guy. I'd trade McAvoy and/or Pastrnak and bring down Brady Tkachuk. Brady’s bigger than Matthew. He hasn't quite put up the numbers, but it's close. He's a couple years younger and wouldn't that be good drama, having Brady going against Matthew.  

Mazz: Is he a center?  

Felger: Of course you throw that at me. Now you’re going to ask me of he’s left shot or right shot?  

Mazz: No, I'm not going to ask. 

Felger: I DON'T KNOW.  

Mazz: He's a left wing.  

Felger: OK, he's a winger. Left shot, left wing. Bring me a Tkachuk. Bring me one of those Tkachuk dicks and let's go. And let's have those two go at each other. You think they'd lay off each other or just the opposite? I think they've been trying to electrocute each other since the day they were six years old, those two.  

Listen to Felger and Mazz from 2-6 every Monday-Friday on 98.5 The Sports Hub, with hosts Mike Felger, Tony “Mazz” Massarotti, and Jim Murray “Big Jim”. You can listen live in the Sports Hub App and subscribe to their podcasts here. Follow @FelgerAndMazz on Twitter to keep up with the show!

Make no mistake about it, the Bruins will have options when it comes to Linus Ullmark this summer.

Bruins general manager Don Sweeney knows as much — and in a rare move given how he tends to conduct business through the media (he doesn't) — has said as much.

"Those things will take care of themselves," Sweeney said at management's break-up day when discussing the uncertain future of Ullmark amid trade rumors and a massive payday awaiting restricted free agent goaltender Jeremy Swayman. "No conversation I'm going to have with a player in terms of what we're trying to do, until we have to have a conversation, is really going to go public. I hope you all respect that because ultimately that's as a player, a former player, I would hope would happen.

"We're gonna find a landing spot with Swayman, and if we can make the math work, we're going to have the best tandem. If we can't, we're going to explore [options], and for Linus, he may come to us and change his mind, that may occur as well. Right now we're very happy to have signed Linus, and in a perfect world, we would keep the tandem because I think it's damn good. But we're going to explore opportunities. My phone's going to ring, I'm going to make calls. That's just what the job requires."

And based on initial reporting, those calls have happened and will continue to happen in what's sure to be an absolutely insanely busy for the Bruins.

Beginning with what's already happened, word from Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman indicated that the Bruins had received a call from the Hurricanes regarding Ullmark's availability earlier this year.

“I do believe the Bruins and the Hurricanes talked about an Ullmark deal,” Friedman said last week on the '32 Thoughts' podcast. “Now, number one, it has to be recognized that Ullmark would have to be able to go there, and I don’t know where Carolina is or is not on his list. But I do believe it’s something these two teams talked about."

Friedman's timeline here indicates that the sides talked about the deal at the 2024 NHL trade deadline. What's interesting about that timeline is that it was during what was a four-month absence for the Hurricanes' Frederik Andersen due to blood clots that put his NHL career in jeopardy. Andersen would ultimately return to the Canes at the trade deadline, and finished his regular season on an 8-1-0 run with a .951 save percentage.

Andersen did not keep that up in the postseason, however, and posted an .895 save percentage in 10 playoff games for the Hurricanes, which was the third-worst among goalies with at least five appearances in the 2024 postseason.

At first glance, the Hurricanes seem relatively set in goal assuming that Andersen is indeed fully healthy moving forward. And the 34-year-old Andersen is a pretty solid 'budget' option, all things considered, as he's entering the final year of a contract that comes with a $3.4 million cap hit. The Hurricanes also have standout rookie Pyotr Kochetkov (23 wins and a .911 save percentage in 40 starts last year) behind Andersen, and at $2 million.

But with the team still unable to get over the hump, sometimes due to goaltending instability, the Hurricanes could be looking for what they view as a potential upgrade in the 2023 Vezina winner and 6-foot-5 Ullmark.

Ullmark could also represent the chance for the Hurricanes to get an NHL-caliber return for restricted free agent and potential Carolina castoff Martin Necas. The belief around the league is that Necas views himself as something greater than the role he's been given in Carolina, and that he would like to play somewhere he can play center (the Hurricanes have used Necas as a wing for the majority of his Carolina run). And given the complicated cap puzzle in front of interim general manager Eric Tulsky, it's possible that Necas is on the outs no matter what.

One of the fastest skaters in the entire NHL, Necas is coming off a 2023-24 campaign that featured 24 goals and 53 points in 77 games, and a postseason run that included four goals and nine points in 11 games. Necas, who was the No. 12 overall pick in 2017, also hails from Czechia, giving him a natural connection with David Pastrnak and Pavel Zacha. The trio all skated on the Czechia roster that just won the 2024 World Championships in Czechia, too.

And north of the border, there's talk of the Senators taking another run at acquiring Ullmark.

"[Steve] Staios and the club’s hockey operations department are expected to make another pitch before the draft set for June 28-29 in Las Vegas," Senators insider Bruce Garrioch wrote last week. "The Senators, Los Angeles Kings and New Jersey Devils were among several teams that made a push for the 30-year-old Ullmark before the deadline."

A natural problem for a team like the Senators may come back to Ullmark's no-trade list, with Ullmark both clear on the fact that he wants to stay with the Bruins and hyper-mindful of going to a potentially bad team.

“It’s very hard," Ullmark said of his no-trade list and waiving it for a team on the list. "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.”

There are obvious workarounds to any limitations or concerns when it comes to moving Ullmark. As Sweeney said, perhaps Ullmark is willing to change his mind on a certain city or location he once passed on. It's also possible that a big-money extension with his next team could become a determining factor for Ullmark waiving his no-trade.

But what could the Bruins want or expect out of a deal with Ottawa?

"A league executive said Thursday he believes the Senators would likely have to offer defenceman Jakob Chychrun along with a first-round pick and another selection to acquire Ullmark," Garrioch wrote. "Even then, [Ullmark] has the hammer because he does have the modified no-trade clause."

If that's the trade on the table, the Bruins would likely say yes a thousand times over, and do whatever they possibly could to get Ullmark to say yes to waiving his no-trade. (Throw him another Polestar or seven, I don't know.)

Chychrun, like Ullmark, is entering the final year of his current contract (which comes with a $4.6 million cap hit), but would present the Bruins with the option to build out a long-term left-side defense featuring Chychrun, Mason Lohrei, and Hampus Lindholm all under team control for the foreseeable future. The Bruins were believed to be in the mix for Chychrun, who put up 14 goals and 41 points in 82 games this year, prior to his trade from Arizona to Ottawa.

As far as the first-round pick, it is worth noting that Ottawa possesses a 2024 first-round pick that originally belonged to Boston, but was traded to Detroit in 2023 for Tyler Bertuzzi and later flipped to Ottawa for Alex DeBrincat.