The Boston Bruins and goaltender Jeremy Swayman ended their prolonged contract negotiations Sunday by coming to terms on a new 8 year, $66M extension.
Swayman, a restricted free agent, had missed all of training camp thus far as negotiations hit an impasse. Once thought of as a mere formality, talks took a contentious turn following the trade of former Vezina winner Linus Ullmark to the Ottawa Senators.
Both sides dug in their heels in terms of the numbers they felt comfortable with, and genuine concern amongst the Bruins faithful began to grow regarding whether they’d have their number 1 net minder in the crease when the regular season began.
Swayman ultimately inked a 1 year, $3.475M contract via arbitration last offseason, but made it clear that he had no interest in going through that process with the club again. Sources indicate that the 25 year old was so disillusioned with the RFA process, that he wrote down all of the negative things Boston’s side said in order to lower the cap hit to the arbitrator and revisits them frequently as “motivation”.
Things grew more contentious in a recent media availability with the Bruins’ front office when the number of $64M was floated out in response to a reporter’s question. A figure which Swayman’s camp took offence to, ultimately releasing a statement of their own to clear the air.
With a December 1st deadline to either sign a new deal or sit out the entirety of the 2024-25 NHL campaign, losing Swayman was a proposition that Boston could ill afford to explore.
In the end, cooler heads prevailed and Boston will get their number 1 goaltender back in time for opening night.
“Hey fans, ‘Sway’ here,” Swayman said in a video posted by the Bruins on social media. “I’m so excited to be back. I cannot thank you for all of your support throughout this entire process, but we got a lot of new beginnings to start and I cannot wait to get going.”
With a new $8.25M AAV cap hit, Swayman becomes the league’s 4th highest paid goaltender on an annual basis, trailing only Sergei Bobrovsky, Andrei Vasilevskiy and Connor Hellebuyck. The former 4th rounder posted a .916 save percentage, and 2.53 GAA average across 44 games in 2023-24, along with a 25-10-8 record (3 shutouts).
With his former teammate now in Ottawa, Swayman will share the crease with the recently acquired Joonas Korpisalo in Boston. Over the past few seasons, the Anchorage, Alaska native has started roughly 50% of his team’s games (41, 37, 44 starts over the past 3 years). However, with his new big money deal, and Korpisalo’s struggles last season, it’s largely expected that Swayman will take on an increased role between the pipes this season.
Boston kicks off their 2024-25 campaign with a clash against the Florida Panthers on Tuesday October 8th.
Photo: Jenn G. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license