Backing up Tuukka Rask means a lot of sitting around with a ball cap on.
So expect Niklas Svedberg to see an increased workload with his new team, Salavat Yulaev of the Kontinental Hockey League.
The former Boston Bruins No. 2, set to become a restricted free agent, will try to raise his profile by playing abroad in 2015-16 instead of competing for a backup gig in the NHL, his agent, Allain Roy, told the Boston Globe.
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“The number of games weren’t what I expected,” Svedberg told reporters on the Bruins’ locker cleanout day last month. “I was hoping to play more, and I think I was playing good this year. So certainly I was hoping for more games.
“The kind of position we were in, there was a lot of pressure here on the team, so Tuukka played a lot of games and he also played very well. It’s the way it is. It was kind of frustrating. You want to play more, but that’s the way it is.”
Svedberg, a 25-year-old native of Stockholm, was never drafted into the NHL but worked his way up through the Swedish Elite League and American Hockey League. He posted a 7-5-1 record with a 2.33 goals-against average and .918 save percentage this season with Boston.
Roy told the Globe that Svedberg will earn “more than likely more than double” in the KHL than what he could have commanded as an NHL backup next season.
Solid at the No. 1 position, the Bruins must look for a new backup for the fourth consecutive off-season.
Boston may turn to 21-year-old prospect Malcolm Subban, whom they gave a one-game peek in 2014-15, 26-year-old AHLer Jeremy Smith, or look for experience on the free-agent market.
Calgary’s Karri Ramo, Dallas’s Jhonas Enroth, New York’s Michal Neuvirth, Ottawa’s Andrew Hammond, and Edmonton’s Viktor Fasth are among the quality backups set to turn UFA on July 1.
