Morning Skate: Looming

Happy Friday, folks!

Two things are looming: the start of August (where did summer go?) and two Bruin arbitration hearings.

Currently, Jeremy Swayman is slated to have his hearing on July 30 (which is odd, as I didn’t think they’d have these kinds of things on a Sunday), while Trent Frederic is scheduled for next Tuesday, August 1.

I’ve said a lot of things repetitively this summer, including “I think Patrice Bergeron will be back” (wrong) and “I think Swayman and Frederic will sign deals before arbitration.”

At this point, it looks like I’m going to be 0-for-2 (0-for-3 if you break the arbitrations out), barring some late-breaking negotiations.

Elliotte Friedman reported this morning that the two sides aren’t exactly in the same neighborhood:

I feel like you can split 2 and 4 and say “let’s settle on 3,” but Swayman’s camp is essentially at $5 million, so...yeah.

Looks like they’ll be arguing over their numbers in court, or arbitration court, whatever it is.

Good times.

In other news, Pavel Zacha got married recently, which is nice:

Career year, getting married, slated to be a 1C...everything’s coming up Zacha!

What’s on tap for today?