BRIGHTON, Mass. — It is the job of Boston Bruins goalie Linus Ullmark to turn aside shots from opponents and when it came to answer questions on if he played through a substantial injury in the playoffs, he redirected those, too.
Ullmark played coy with reporters Tuesday during exit-interview day at Warrior Ice Arena, not letting any details slip about if he endured any ailment in the six games he appeared in during Boston’s first-round loss to the Florida Panthers.
“With the respect of everybody around, especially me and everybody around it, I just decided not to clarify that whole thing,” Ullmark said.
Ullmark, who left the second-to-last game of the regular season with what the Bruins called “muscle tightening” also didn’t reveal if he’ll need surgery in the offseason. He sure looked hindered by something, not producing at the same level in the playoffs than he did in the regular season as the likely Vezina Trophy winner.
The 29-year-old posted a 3.33 goals-against average and a .896 save percentage in the series against the Panthers and said that playing hurt, rather than injured was a “good way to describe” whatever he worked through.
“This is also something that people that played the game understand and go through: Are you hurt or are you injured?” Ullmark said. “So, you can be hurt and still playing. That’s the thing we were doing. You have guys who are dealing with different kind of things. People have broken bones, you have (Zdeno) Chara, who had a broken jaw. Was he hurting? Yeah, he was hurting. But somethings you can play through without it making you play worse.”
Ullmark added that he never doubted that he could play at any point in the series and would have been ready to go for Game 7 if the Bruins didn’t decide to turn the net over to Jeremy Swayman.
While Ullmark wasn’t 100%, he didn’t use that as an excuse for his subpar play and understands he came up short when the Bruins needed him most.
“We all go through things in life. We all go through things when it comes to playoff time,” Ullmark said. “We all battle our different things, whether it’s mentality or physicality, we all have our stuff. We all want to be out there and help the team out to the best of our capabilities. Yeah, it’s pretty evident I didn’t play the way that I wanted to. I wasn’t as good as I wanted to be unfortunately at the worst time possible. That’s something I have to live with.”
