If Bruins don’t pay Jeremy Swayman, it will torpedo their season

If Bruins don’t pay Jeremy Swayman, it will torpedo their season originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

For three years, the Bruins rostered two of the best goalies in the NHL. Right now they have neither.

If this was Don Sweeney’s plan, then to quote Black Widow’s little sister: “Your plan sucks.”

The Bruins opened camp on Thursday with neither Linus Ullmark nor Jeremy Swayman in net. They traded the former in order to hand the keys to the latter while yeah-yeah-yeahing away one tiny detail: Swayman’s a restricted free agent. And it turns out negotiations aren’t going well.

WEEI’s Rich Keefe reports that Swayman wants $10 million a year and the Bruins aren’t willing to pay him more than $8 million. That sounds surmountable if you follow baseball, where $8 million gets you a good middle reliever, but it might as well be the great wall of Westeros in a hard-capped sport like hockey.

The only two goalies making at least $10 million annually are Montreal‘s Carey Price and Florida‘s Sergei Bobrovsky. Both have won the Vezina Trophy, while Bobrovsky just backstopped the Panthers to their first Stanley Cup.

For convoluted reasons unique to hockey, it’s not Swayman’s turn to make that kind of dough. But if ever a player were positioned to challenge a system which prioritizes past performance over future projection, it’s the UMaine grad.

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The Bruins, after all, are legit Cup contenders, thanks to Sweeney’s otherwise solid offseason. He added two-way center Elias Lindholm and bruising defenseman Nikita Zadorov to address a lack of physicality that doomed the B’s in the second round vs. the Panthers. After years of regular season success that didn’t translate to the playoffs, the Bruins suddenly look built to win next spring.

That optimism evaporates without Swayman, which is why I don’t buy the argument that the Bruins hold all the leverage.

There’s no way they want to gamble their season on the untested Brandon Bussi and/or declining Joonas Korpisalo, simply because Boston‘s goalie platoon technically denied Swayman the opportunity to be a full-time No. 1 and thus make No. 1 money. He sure looked the part last spring vs. the Maple Leafs and Panthers, when the Bruins handed him the reins. He is widely considered a top-10 talent, so pay him like one.

The Bruins are too good everywhere else to just wing it in net, which gives Swayman considerable power. Coach “Goalie Bob” Essensa has worked his share of miracles, but starting from scratch three weeks before the opener feels sub-optimal. The Bruins know it, and Swayman definitely does, too.

The B’s can counter that if Swayman doesn’t sign by Dec. 1 — a date Sweeney invoked multiple times during Wednesday’s combative press conference — then he’ll miss the season, which doesn’t improve anyone’s bargaining position.

Veiled threats are one way to approach the negotiation, I suppose, but it would be more productive to secure Swayman to a contract that reflects his worth, rather than playing hardball and costing him valuable prep time for the season. As it is, the Bruins are already damaging their relationship with the Alaska native, who’s still smarting from last year’s contentious arbitration hearing. Let this drag on too long, and everybody loses.

Besides, if the Bruins wanted cost certainty, they should’ve just kept Ullmark, who still had one year remaining on the $20 million extension he signed in 2021. But they recognized the 25-year-old Swayman had surpassed him, so they chose talent over convenience and traded the 31-year-old to Ottawa.

It was hard to fault the logic, which made sense if they planned on paying Swayman. And maybe they still will, like previous holdouts David Pastrňák and Charlie McAvoy, who arrived within days of the first practice.

The two sides feel more entrenched this time, and that’s scary. Assuming the $10 million ask is simply a negotiating tactic, there’s room for the Bruins to get uncomfortable. What’s the worst that happens if they break with precedent and overpay their franchise goalie?

If Swayman’s as good as they clearly believe, then they’ll have locked up one of the most important positions on the ice for six-plus years. Even $9 million annually will eventually feel like a bargain as the cap rises.

The alternative is taking this thing into the season, where it will fester. In that case, the Bruins should brace for the consequences and prepare to defend how their plan was actually no plan at all.