When Tyler Bertuzzi settled for a one-year deal worth $5.5 million with the Toronto Maple Leafs, many people across the hockey world were a bit surprised. Bertuzzi was considered one of the top free agents available and, though it was a relatively weak class, those guys usually cash in with both term and money.

You can count Bruins’ GM Don Sweeney in that group. After talks with Bertuzzi’s camp didn’t produce a deal, Sweeney went out and signed James van Riemsdyk, Milan Lucic, Kevin Shattenkirk, Morgan Geekie, and Patrick Brown.

Bertuzzi’s agent himself said that they were originally looking for a long term but pivoted after realizing no contenders had space for such a deal.

“Probably a little bit (surprised). His goal – and I’ll speak more generally about a player on another team at this point in time – there were players that were looking for longer term deals and my discussions were focused around that,” said Sweeney. “Some teams were in good position to absorb shorter term deals at the right numbers. We had to go and fill our gaps. We made a move to open up the space we needed to. It would have required us to be even more proactive and do deals that we explored but we didn’t feel the value was there to open up more space and be overly aggressive, to a do a deal and then have to make a move as a result of that.”

Asked if the concept of a one-year deal was a non-starter with Bertuzzi’s camp prior to July 1, Sweeney said, “If we had offered a much higher number, maybe not. But those weren’t the focus of our discussions.”

Waiting out the marketplace was not a position the Bruins were in, said Sweeney.

“There’s risk/reward and a strategy. Some teams were in a position to wait it out. Some teams had LTIR situations that they may be able to utilize and be patient and other teams were very aggressive on Day One, not going short term but longer because they’ve got projections that allow them to do it now,” said Sweeney. “It looks like we’re going to have a lot of flexibility moving forward, so that’s just where we are in our cycle and we needed to fill some holes. We made a move in being aggressive by bringing in Geekie, which was…a reactionary thing because you don’t know (he wasn’t going to be qualified,which made him a free agent on June 30). You just don’t. But we were in position to say ‘OK, can we bring in a player that’s a position of interest for us as a center and right shot and can play the wing as well.’ Hopefully he’s on an upward trajectory.”

Sweeney reiterated the team’s goal of remaining competitive.

“Even with Taylor Hall, where we freed up enough space to do what we had to do, we’re not trying to walk a good player out of our lineup,” said Sweeney. “We had a really a good team this year. We had a lot of good players and we had tough decisions to make. We’re still waiting on some decisions. That’s not the goal, just stripping things down. You see teams do it around the deadline when their situations have been determined. We’ve got a competitive corps. We’re trying to complement that and allow some guys to grow. And we’ve got three players that filed for arbitration (Jeremy Swayman, Trent Frederic, Ian Mitchell) and two players (Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci) that were an important part of that as well that we have to factor in.”….

Dans Locmelis may be a little-known Bruins’ prospect, but he’s something of a rock star back home in Latvia.

After Locemelis and his Latvian national team members captured the bronze medal at the World Championship in Finland in May – the country’s first medal ever t the tournament – the next day was declared a national holiday and the team was treated mass celebration that would have outdone any Stanley Cup parade.

Needless to say, it left an indelible mark on the 19-year-old Locmelis.

“That was amazing. That’s our home, Latvia, so it gets more emotional for us. When we came back to Latvia and seeing all these fans coming to support us, it was really amazing,” said .Locmelis

“If you asked me one year ago, if I imagined something like that, I’d say no. That was something special.”

The 5-foot-10, 154-pound Locmelis, who is headed to Umass-Amherst in the fall, may be slight but he has a knack for producing. For the Lulea HF junior team in Sweden last year 25-34-59 totals and he scored a couple of goals in the World Championships.

“He can shoot the puck,” said B’s player development assistant Danielle Marmer. “And he’s shifty. He can play inside. He plays in the interior. In that big ice surface it’s a little bit easier and I think that’s the adjustment for him when he gets to the college game. But watching him out here, he’s a done a pretty good job of it this week.”

And he brings his game stateside with a pretty nice feather in his cap already.

“What they did with Latvia’s team was pretty unbelievable,” said Marmer. “And from him talking about his experience, I think just as an experience that’s something he’ll remember for a really long time. I’m selfishly excited for him to get to school over here in the states so I’ll get to spend a lot more time with him. It’s just such a good experience for him to play at that level.”…

On the final day of Development Camp, the prospects held a scrimmage,with Ty Gallagher and Frederic Brunet scoring for the winning team and Brett Harrison setting up Cole Spicer for the losers…

Sweeney had no update on Patrice Bergeron (who is mulling retirement) other than to announce the birth of Felix Bergeron, Bergeorn and his wife Stephanie’s fourth child.