Morning Skate: Ceilings

Welcome to Thursday! The weekend is in sight. Kind of.

GM Don Sweeney met the media yesterday, and his comments were about what you’d expect: happy to have Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci back, happy to have Pavel Zacha under contract, etc.

Sweeney also referenced the gymnastics the team will have to do at some point to get cap compliant, mentioning the possibility of getting that done through trades or through waivers, so it’ll be interesting to see how that shakes out.

They can, of course, LTIR some players and deal with the trades later. However, you can’t help but wonder if other teams will stick it to the B’s in, say, late October when they know they have to trade someone to get a player off LTIR.

I guess we’ll see!

No news on the David Pastrnak front either — the tenor of conversations seems to have shifted from “we’re in contact working on a deal” to “we’ll talk again when he’s back in the States,” so take that as you will.

Today’s discussion topic

In yesterday’s press conference, Sweeney had this to say about Trent Frederic:

I think he wants to be a more impactful player offensively and affect the game overall physically and stay healthy. You know, I don’t think, there’s no way he’s just a fourth line player for us. I think that he has a higher ceiling and an impact.

So...what is Frederic’s ceiling?

I don’t know that I see him ever getting above a third-liner at very best, but there’s still time.