Jeremy Swayman can’t wait to get back in the net for the Boston Bruins, but he’s going to have to wait at least one game, as GM Don Sweeney confirmed Coach Jim Montgomery’s plan to start Joonas Korpisalo in Tuesday’s season opener in Sunrise, Florida (7 pm, ESPN, 98.5 – pending preventive, cross-state impacts of the hurricane headed for the Gulf Coast by Wednesday afternoon).
“Game reps are game reps, preseason is there for a reason,” said Sweeney, who acknowledges Swayman’s effort is unquestioned but also that there is work to do with goalie coach Bob Essensa.
Sweeney and Swayman, in that order, met with media Sunday morning at Warrior Arena to announce Swayman’s new contract (eight years at $8.25 million per season) and dodge questions meant to deconstruct the acrimony that went viral after team president Cam Neely outed the Bruins’ 8×8-ish intentions during last Monday’s executive presser.
“When I start getting reps, I’m going to be game ready. I want to be game ready right away,” said Swayman who, ecstatic that the negotiations are over and done with, steadfastly refused to engage questions about last week’s static.
Sweeney was slightly more agreeable to the discussion point but no more likely to do what Neely did, carrying forth the raw, loose-cannon emotion that helped make his forecheck so formidable as a Hall of Fame winger and amateur-draft influencer.
“For me, that’s just an indication that both sides wanted to find a deal. … We unfortunately have make some hard roster decisions, but that’s part of the business, too,” said Sweeney, who acknowledged that, had an agreement not been reached by Monday night, the situation would systematically have gotten worse for the unsigned player and his team from earnings and salary-cap standpoints.
Swayman’s first goalie hug will be with his father, but he also had kind words for his agent Lewis Gross, and he opened by publicly paying respects to the family of Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau. (Johnny Gaudreau was a fellow Gross client.)
So it’s over, and from an impact standpoint, it would seem Swayman will be ready sooner rather than later. How much will Korpisalo’s play hold Swayman back from taking the reins as Boston’s No. 1 goalie in more ways than the number on his back?
Sixty years of hockey fandom have taught me that the sport has many good coaches and many good goaltenders and that the teams around them, especially their defensemen, can make or break the careers of the vast majority of those coaches and goaltenders.
The trick to winning is a little like a memorable rock band. Its drummer doesn’t have to be on any accomplished musician’s all-time, top-10 list, but it has to be the right one.
I know I’m drilling deep down memory lane with this one, but poll the five oldest fans you see at your next hockey game, and the chances are pretty good they’ll say Tony Esposito was as good or better than Ken Dryden – who won the Stanley Cup six times over an eight-year, NHL career (“Tony-O” came very close in 1971 but never won it). No one, however, will dispute that Dryden that was the goalie most perfectly matched with his team – ever.
Boston Bruins management decided during the 2024 Stanley Cup playoffs that Swayman is the right goalie to take them to the top, and to that end they took last week’s public salvos as an opportunity to reason together and avoid a protracted situation that would have turned ugly for player and team alike.
As my BostonHockeyNow.com colleague Chris Hurley reminded me in early September, the late, great Pat Burns once told him he had never seen a camp holdout that didn’t adversely affect both the team’s season and the player’s career.
The $8.25 million AAV over the life of the new contract places Swayman in a fifth-place tie with N.Y. Islanders goalie Ilya Sorokin behind Montreal’s Carey Price ($10.5M per year), Florida’s Sergei Bobrovsky ($10M), Tampa Bay’s Andrei Vasilevskiy ($9.5M), and Winnipeg’s Connor Hellebuyck ($8.5M).
Goalies still lag well behind goal scorers when it comes to the big bucks, both leaguewide (Price’s salary ranks 13th overall in the NHL) and within the Bruins’ structure (David Pastrnak earns $11.25M per and Charlie McAvoy $9.5M). The contract will take the 25-year-old Swayman into his mid thirties.
While Korpisalo has done nothing to dispel the wisdom in taking on a portion of his contract as part of the compensatory package in the trade of Ullmark to the Ottawa Senators, the 30-year-old Finn has only been good, not great, this preseason.
One aspect that cannot be overlooked in the Bruins’ last two seasons was an incredible start fueled largely by clutch goaltending in tight games. Ullmark played the feature role in those early outcomes in the magical 2022-23 season; it was split between Ullmark and Swayman last season.
If the preseason serves as any indication, the Bruins will struggle out of the gate to score goals. In order to mitigate their slow-to-develop offense, it is imperative that they defend well and get more-than-solid goaltending. Without both, a start comparable to the last two seasons is completely out of the question, and falling behind would be more likely.
In this sense, the Swayman signing is huge.
Not that Korpisalo isn’t an underrated goalie who performed very solidly in the only positive-environment experience of his past two seasons, a short stint with the Los Angeles Kings after the 2023 trade deadline (he even won two playoff games off Edmonton, but Swayman gives the Bruins a level of goaltending that on most nights will make them look better than they are.
Snapshot: During Thursday night’s preseason loss to the Kings in Quebec City, 6-foot-5, 220-pound centerman Quintin Byfield scored a hat trick. On one of his goals, he overmatched Parker Wotherspoon at the top of the Boston crease and swatted a rebound between Korpisalo’s outstretched skate and the goal post.
The goal was not Korpisalo’s fault, but Swayman might have – probably would have? – had that.
The fine line between exonerating your goalie after a loss and learning to count upon a certain number of undeserved saves that keep your team in games you probably shouldn’t win, that’s what the Bruins shelled out for by signing Swayman to this career deal.
Whether the Bruins lose any early-season games 7-5 or 2-1, this market will only be second to Toronto when it comes to punitive reactions. That’s a pressure that accomplished professionals put on themselves to begin with, but it will be interesting to see how Swayman responds to cat calls from the balcony should the Bruins not knock the first 20-game segment out of the park like they did the last two years.
Reactions to training camp were puzzling in that so many fans were ready to throw their smart phones into the Charles when (since recalled but stay tuned) Fabian Lysell was included in last week’s round of camp cuts, but so many were also ready to drive Swayman to Logan.
The only Bruins goaltender to win a playoff series since Tuukka Rask eliminated the Washington Capitals in 2021 is Swayman, who over his seven-game win against Toronto and his six-game loss to Florida last spring put up a 2.15 goals-against average and a .933 save percentage.
So Swayman’s back. He’s the making the big bucks, now he’s got to make the big saves. The Cup is no longer half full, and the honeymoon is over. Given his reaction to Boston Herald reporter Steve Conroy’s question about fan criticism amidst these negotiations, it would seem that Swayman is not reading certain cell-phone aps.
As for Neely, he may actually be feeling good about publicly outing the Bruins’ (if not accurate in the moment) intentions of making this an 8×8-ish deal. Like it or not, it was the gateway comment to loosen the stalemate.
Especially if the Bruins start poorly – and, remember, losing 7-5 will be no different than 2-1 – someone will argue that Swayman would have settled for less had Sweeney not dealt Ullmark, and the net total of cap space taken by goalies would come out the same, keeping the NHL’s best tandem of the past two years intact.
That will be some argument, if only it were true.
Swayman did not change his opinion of his own worth because the Bruins no longer have Ullmark. Swayman is a high-achieving, high-expectation thinker, different from but in this one regard like the great Tim Thomas, a special athlete on his own program with his own set of beliefs and methods that, while melding well with a team on the ice and in the room, doesn’t at all mean that his own opinions and outlooks are not to be taken seriously.
The important thing is the Bruins and Swayman are back on track to have the kind of season both sides were anticipating when last season ended.
Rink Rap with Mick Colageo 