When it comes to contract negotiations, Bruins GM Don Sweeney likes to keep te particulars to himself. His comments are usually lawyerly and anodyne. It’s an approach that has usuallly gotten business done, including big money deals for David Pastrnak and Charlie McAvoy.
Cam Neeley chose different route on Monday.
Clearly frustrated with how the Jeremy Swayman negotiations are going – and more than a little exasperated with the growing narrative that has been shading the Bruins as being both alligator-armed and uncommunicative – Neely laid the club’s cards on the table.
“I don’t want to get into the weeds with what his ask is but I have 64 million reasons why I’d be playing right now,” said Neely while on the dais with CEO Charlie Jacobs, Sweeney and coach Jim Montgomery in the Legends club at the Garden.
You don’t need Stephen Hawking to figure out that number translates to the NHL max term deal of eight years and a yearly salary of $8 million, a term and figure to which some in the media have speculated that the club would not be willing to extend themselves. It’s widely believed that Swayman’s camp is looking for $9.5 million over eight years. His agent, Lewis Gross, did not respond to a request for comment.
For the new buttoned-down NHL, Neely delivered a broadside that was reminiscent of former B’s GM Harry Sinden’s greatest hits. But instead of telling the world why the team wasn’t going to dump a boatload of cash on a players front lawn, Neely put his name on what would be a pretty fair offer. That number would put Swayman behind only Sergei Bobrovsky ($10 million AAV), Andrei Vasilevskiy ($9.5 million), Connor Hellebuyck ($8.5 million) and Ilya Sorokin ($8.25 million) among active goalies.
Of those four, only Sorokin has won neither a Vezina Trophy or a Stanley Cup. And while most goaltending people suggest Swayman very well could earn that kind of hardware in the near future, the fact of the matter is that the most Swayman has played in a season is 44 games, last season. Up until now, he’s benefited from being in a two-goalie rotation with Linus Ullmark, who won the Vezina in 2022-23 and was traded last June in order for Swayman to get more games – and to get paid like a No, 1 goalie. The number that’s apparently on the table would pay him like a very good No. 1.
Could Neely’s bluntness backfire and further fray the hard feelings that seemingly go back to last year’s arbitration case? Sure. But let’s face it. Playing nice has not gotten the club very far on a long-term deal. The B’s could have opted for a two-year contract when Swayman’s camp took the team to arbitration last year, when Swayman was awarded a $3.475 million deal, but he chose the one-year deal, presumably to get a long-term deal done. Sweeney could have also filed for arbitration in the most recent offseason, knowing that arbitration rewards a player for what he has already done, not for what he may do in the future.
But he did not file for arbitration again. Sweeney and Neely both believe Swayman is the real deal, it’s just a matter of what they believe the price tag is for a front-line goalie. Neely believes that the Swayman camp is trying to reset the market for goaltenders. The camp of Ranger goalie Igor Shesterkin, who is scheduled to be an unrestricted free agent next season, is no doubt watching this negotiation closely.
But whether or not there’s a difference in philosophies between the two camps, Neely feels like the B’s have negotiated in good faith from the start.
“Don’s done a really good job of initial offers to players. One of the things we talked about when he when he got the job was, being a former player, I’m not a big fan of low ball, high ball and figure it out somewhere in the middle,” said Neely. “It’s like, okay, get the right comp, get the right comp group, put the right offer on the table. And I think Don’s past has shown that he can get deals done. This is one that’s just been a little trickier. That’s all. I strongly believe that Jeremy wants to play here. I’ve asked him flat out, do you want to play here? And he does. I believe that they’ll get a deal done. It’s unfortunate it’s not done today.”
While neither Neely nor Sweeney have ever really articulated this point, both of them came of age as players when the Bruins were cementing their reputation as being cheap. After a while, Boston — despite being arguably the best hockey cities in America – became a place to which free agents did not want come to. It took years to dig out from that rep, a process that was ultimately accelerated when free agent Zdeno Chara chose the Bruins in 2006.
Perhaps some of that knowledge was behind Neely show his hand on Monday. We’ll see if the bold statement unlocks the stalemate.
But as of right now, Joonas Korpisalo is your starting goalie for the season opener in Florida a week from now.
