The contract standoff between the Boston Bruins and restricted free agent Jeremy Swayman reached a new level of contentiousness Monday as the goaltender's agent emphatically pushed back on what the team claimed it had offered him.
Swayman, 25, opted not to attend Bruins training camp without a new contract. Coach Jim Montgomery said that goaltender Joonas Korpisalo is expected to start the Bruins' season opener Oct. 8 vs. the Florida Panthers.
At a preseason news conference Monday in Boston, team president Cam Neely said he believes Swayman wants to play in Boston but that it's "unfortunate" a deal isn't yet done.
"I don't want to get into the weeds with what his ask is," he said, "but I know that I have 64 million reasons why I'd be playing right now."
Swayman's agent Lewis Gross shot back at the Bruins on Monday night, disputing those contract numbers while expressing disappointment in the team discussing them.
"Normally, I do not release statements or discuss negotiations through the media," Gross said in a statement on Instagram. "However, in this case, I feel I need to defend my client. At today's press conference, $64 million was referenced. That 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," Gross continued. "We will take a few days to discuss where we go from here."
The Bruins "respectfully passed" on addressing Gross' comments when contacted by ESPN's Kristen Shilton.
Neely expressed surprise over Swayman's asking price, saying he believes Swayman wants to reset the goalie market with his contract.
"What his ask is, and what we believe his comp group is, are two different things," Neely said.
Swayman is expected to be the primary starting goaltender for the Bruins after they traded goalie Linus Ullmark to the Ottawa Senators in the offseason. That duo was the NHL's best tandem over the past three seasons, helping the Bruins to the lowest goals-against average (2.49) in that span. But general manager Don Sweeney said the duo had to be broken up out of salary cap and playing time concerns.
"We made a decision to chart a course. Both goaltenders asked to play 55 games. That's not possible if you're playing on the same team," Sweeney said of the Ullmark trade, which brought Korpisalo to Boston. "We decided to make a decision. We were comfortable going forward with Jeremy. We knew what the likely return would be for Linus."
Sweeney has been criticized for not having Swayman locked into a new deal before trading Ullmark, thus impacting the team's leverage. The general manager said the trade and the negotiation "are not connected," but declined to elaborate on where talks with Swayman were when Ullmark was traded.
"I don't regret that decision one bit, in terms of the decision we made to move forward and attack some of the areas we could benefit from in the free agent market," Sweeney said.
Swayman is entering his fifth NHL season. He has a record of 79-33-15, with a .919 save percentage and a 2.34 goals-against average.
Swayman made $3.475 million on a one-year contract last season, which was awarded through arbitration. He opted not to file for arbitration this offseason and the Bruins declined to take Swayman to arbitration, leaving his next contract to be decided through negotiations between Sweeney and Gross.
There have been reports that the Bruins offered Swayman an eight-year contract, the maximum length the NHL allows. There have also been reports that Swayman's camp is looking for upwards of $9.5 million in average annual value on his next contract. That would tie him with Tampa's Andrei Vasilevskiy for the third highest cap hit in the NHL for goaltenders, behind Montreal's Carey Price ($10.5 million) and Florida's Sergei Bobrovsky ($10 million).
Sweeney said earlier at Bruins training camp that he expected Swayman would rejoin the team before Dec. 1, which is the deadline for the contract to be valid for this season.