BRIGHTON – Amidst some empty, premature reports that the Bruins and Jeremy Swayman might have struck a deal at the beginning of training camp, the hard truth came out on Wednesday afternoon that the 25-year-old goalie isn’t anywhere close to being in the fold as B’s players reported to Warrior Ice Arena for medicals and fitness testing.
The truth is far, far different with the Bruins and Swayman’s camp still apparently far apart in contract talks on a new deal for the restricted free agent, and a feisty Don Sweeney vehemently contradicting media reports while also tellingly throwing out that things might not get resolved until a Dec. 1 deadline for the goaltender to ink a new deal and play during the 2024-25 NHL season.
"I'm disappointed but... I'm optimistic"
— NBC Sports Boston (@NBCSBoston) September 18, 2024
Don Sweeney provides an update on Jeremy Swayman's contract negotiations pic.twitter.com/EnmOZLNaxH
That’s a pretty bleak picture, to be sure, and “disappointing” that Swayman won’t be on the ice when the Bruins players get on the ice for camp on Thursday morning. Sweeney said he will continue to negotiate with Swayman and agent Lewis Gross, but none of his state of the B’s updates sounded like there was anything close to optimism it was going to get done in short order.
“I will say that every day that Jeremy is out it hurts our team, it hurts our preparation that we would like to do, and he needs to do, but it’s not going to stop from hoping to find common ground and getting it done,” said Sweeney. “I’m certainly not going to predict (when it gets done). I do believe that he’ll be in before December 1 because we all want him to play hockey, and our team will be better for it.”
Yikes.
The belief is that Swayman is looking for “the McAvoy contract” that’s currently paying the Bruins defensemen a total of $9.5 million per season, but it makes little sense in terms of finding comparable players in negotiations. One contract for a D-man has absolutely nothing to do with the other for a goaltender since the two players play vastly different positions, and that’s a pretty obvious point that everybody should understand.
Instead, there are pretty much no past comparable goalie contracts with Swayman for a player that’s never played more than 44 games in a season, has never shouldered the full brunt of a No. 1 goalie workload without sharing it with a Vezina Trophy caliber goalie partner and hasn’t garnered the kind of Vezina/All-League accolades that other NHL goalies have earned before signing those kinds of big money contracts.
Juuse Saros’ previous contract, while sharing time with Pekka Rinne in Nashville, is a bit of a fair comparable to where Swayman is right now, and that was a three-year, $15 million contract prior to his massive current contract (8 years, $7.74 million AAV) that Saros earned after several seasons for the Preds where he started 60 plus games and became the clear-cut No. 1 in Nashville.
Even that Saros deal is years ago now, though, and there would have to be adjustments made for salary inflation and the rising cap.
From the B’s perspective, they believe that Swayman isn’t on firm ground to be asking for top dollar in terms of goaltender pay, in other words, Andrei Vasilevskiy money in the $9.5 million AAV neighborhood, because he’s simply not there yet in a stellar career trajectory that sees him on the verge of NHL stardom.
Clearly the Bruins are bracing themselves for the possibility that they will be starting the season with Joonas Korpisalo and Brandon Bussi in net, and that the Swayman situation may have just spiraled out of control. It’s a stunning possible reality for a team that had the best goalie tandem in the NHL last season with Swayman and Linus Ullmark and might have neither of them on opening night.
Certainly, Sweeney sounded beyond irritated on Wednesday afternoon as he called “bullshit” on the Spittin’ Chiclets podcast intimating that the Bruins didn’t return Swayman’s calls for three weeks, and then mockingly called them the “Spitting Up On Yourself” podcast at one point while discussing how he needs to ignore the noise as an NHL general manager.
“It’s great entertainment,” said Sweeney of the podcast, “but at the end of the day, there’s not a lot of fact-checking going on. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a person, a general manager in the league or anyone, that I’d spend three weeks and not return a phone call. So it’s constant communication, dialogue, finding common ground. Hopefully it’s no different in this case…I’ve said all along I want a negotiated deal and not an arbitration settlement and that’s the goal.
“My son loves Biz, thinks he's fabulous. I think he's a great entertainer. But at the end of the day, it's inaccurate.”
Spittin’ Chiclets podcast co-host Paul [Biz] Bissonnette had a fun response to Sweeney’s blistering attack on Wednesday afternoon himself, and correctly pointed out that it was his partner Ryan Whitney who actually concocted the reports that the Bruins GM went on the attack against.
I love Don. I love Don’s son. I love lamp. Although Don is reporting fake news about fake news, apparently. I did not report 1 thing about the Swayman signing. It was Squanto’s father who reported it. I stand by my partner. #RumourBoys https://t.co/O4BcoDaQvO
— Paul Bissonnette (@BizNasty2point0) September 18, 2024
Ironically enough, the most accurate piece of info from the “Spittin’ Chiclets” podcast might have been the four-year, $6.2 AAV contract offer from the Bruins to Swayman in order to bridge the gap between the two sides. That wasn’t disputed by Sweeney at all, but even that would probably need to come up into the $6.5-7 million AAV range if it was going to get it done on a 3-4-year bridge contract that would eventually take Swayman into unrestricted free agency.
A few days ago, it felt like that sort of bridge deal might have been a fair compromise between two sides that are very far apart on terms for a long-term contract, but now one has to wonder if permanent damage has been done to both sides of the relationship. Sweeney sounds willing to keep working through it all to get a deal done just as he found ways to lock up David Pastrnak, Charlie McAvoy and Brandon Carlo, among others, in year’s past.
“I’ll continue to work every day. It’s not unlike Pastrnak and McAvoy Brandon Carlo and now they’re long-time Boston Bruins,” said Sweeney, who agreed to long-term deals to remain in Boston. “It’s a process that seemingly every year there’s a few players (who aren’t camps) and this is the year that we have one. But I have to continue to do my job. I respect the position that Jeremy and his camp has taken and continue to try to find common ground.”
It's probably time for Bruins fans to get nervous that this is all going to result in a negative outcome for the Black and Gold when it comes to a long, happy marriage between hockey team and a stellar goaltender coming off a tremendous playoff performance.
Things are beginning to get tense in the negotiations as real time is now being missed with Swayman not in training camp, and one has to wonder if true common ground is even possible for sides firmly entrenched in their opposite positions right now.