Welcome back to NHL notebook — the series here at CanucksArmy where we deliver you news and notes from around the National Hockey League — oftentimes through a Vancouver Canucks-tinted lens. 
The Boston Bruins are in a bit of a pickle at the moment, and it feels like we are about to hit a major peak in this storyline.
On Monday, Bruins president of hockey operations Cam Neely met with the media and offered an extremely candid update on the club’s ongoing negotiations with star RFA goaltender Jeremy Swayman.
“Well, I don’t want to get into the specifics of what his ask is, but I know I’d have 64 million reasons why I’d be playing right now,” Neely said.
Neely’s comment suggests that the Bruins have offered Swayman an eight-year contract at $8 million annually, which would make Swayman the league’s fifth-highest paid active goaltender. A contract like that would put Swayman in a tier with names like Connor Hellebuyck, Sergei Bobrovsky, Andrei Vasilevskiy, and Ilya Sorokin, and it would be hard to believe the 25-year-old Swayman would turn a contract like that down with just 125 NHL games under his belt.
You can call Neely’s comment candid, unprofessional, whatever you want — Swayman’s camp called it a flat-out lie later Monday afternoon.
In a statement, Swayman’s agent Lewis Gross said the following:
“Normally, I do not release statements or discuss negotiations through the media. However, in this case, I feel I need to defend my client. At today’s press conference, $64 million was referenced. This was the first time that number was discussed in our negotiations. Prior to the press conference, no offer was made reaching that level. We are extremely disappointed. This was not fair to Jeremy. We will take a few days to discuss where we go from here.”
Now, if you’re only now tuning back into the NHL, let me give you a quick and simple rundown on how we got to this point.
Swayman has been one of the NHL’s top goaltenders since the 2021-22 season. During those seasons though, he’s been splitting starts with Linus Ullmark. The two managed to share the Bruins’ crease admirably, taking home the William M. Jennings trophy in 2022-23 while developing one of the NHL’s best bromances. All good things must come to an end, however, and Swayman emerged as Boston’s guy for their 2024 playoff run.
In the offseason, the Bruins elected to gain some assets and trade one of their star goaltenders, choosing Ullmark, who won the Vezina Trophy as the league’s top goaltender the season prior. Ullmark was dealt to the Ottawa Senators for a bundle of assets that inlcuded goaltender Joonas Korpisalo and a first round pick. Boston made it clear to everyone that Swayman was their guy moving forward.
The only problem, of course, was that they made the trade before having Swayman signed, effectively losing any leverage they had in the negotiation process.
As training camps kicked off, Swayman continued to hold out, and as the NHL preseason enters its final week, Swayman remains unsigned.
After Neely’s comment and Swayman’s camp’s subsequent statement, where do the two sides go from here? The “we will take a fews to discuss where we go from here line” could speak volumes. Do they ask for a trade? Do they just accept the $64 million offer, which appears to be on the table now? There are so many questions still to be answered and its been a while since hockey had a soap opera quite like this one.
You can’t help but feel for Swayman a bit here. Player salaries being public already adds a whole new level of scrutiny for players to manage, but now the fans are led to believe you’re being greedy and refusing to suit up for their team? That pits the fans against Swayman and in my eyes, is bush league from Cam Neely.
Yes, these players are paid millions of dollars to play a children’s game. I get it. But that doesn’t change the fact that Swayman didn’t deserve to have these negotiations enter the public the way they did, especially if the “negotiations” in question truly didn’t even happen.
The Canucks-tinted view on this situation? Every day is a good day to watch the Bruins scramble.
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