As early as last season, Swaymans future as a Boston Bruin has been at the forefront of the fan’s and management’s minds. Now the time has come, and Swayman is set to be an RFA at the end of the year. That leads to the obvious question, what is his next contract?
Swaymans Stats
Swayman is currently in his third NHL season with Boston. He has played 72 games up to this point and has a GAA of 2.08 and a .924 SV%. That is an impressive stat set for a young goalie in the NHL, for sure. As for playoff experience? It doesn’t tell the same story. He has a GAA of 2.90 and a .789 SV% in six games. The real question for Boston is, are they ready to make him their 1A netminder? Swayman is in the final year of a three-year $925k AAV entry-level contract and is set to be due a significant raise, maybe?
Comparables
Jake Oettinger
Oettinger is in the first year of a three-year $4m AAV contract with the Stars. Before signing his RFA extension, he had played 77 regular-season games with a GAA of 2.44 and a .912 SV%. The most significant factor for his contract will be the playoff experience. He has nine playoff games under his belt with a GAA of 1.81 and a .976 SV%, obviously significantly skewed by the limited amount of games, but impressive non the less.
Oettinger has become the bonafide 1A in Dallas early in his career, which definitely helps his contract negotiations, but there are also no other goalies making top dollar in Dallas.
Spencer Knight
Knight is in his final year of ELC and signed his first extension. Prior to this season, Knight signed a three-year $4.5m AAV extension with the Panthers, a commitment to him as their future goaltender. Throughout his first three seasons with the Panthers, Knight has been as advertised. Not overly flashy, but a consistent backstop that can be relied upon throughout a season. So far, Knight has played in 55 games, carrying a 2.71 GAA and a .911 SV%.
Time will tell if Knight turns out to be the 1A in Florida, with Sergei Bobrovsky on the roster with a whopping $10m AAV. There are already rumors floating around that the Panthers would like to move on from that contract as early as last offseason. The recipe of having multiple goalies over $4m AAV isn’t a winning recipe.
Summary
If you isolate the stats between the three goaltenders here, you can see that Swayman has the superior regular season track record. There is no doubt there. So that begs the question, what is Swayman’s next contract?
If you base this prediction on age, performance, and the team’s future, Swayman is an obvious choice to re-sign. The comparables show us that he is easily worth $4m per year, you could argue more, but we can be modest for now.
The part I will be curious to see is HOW the Bruins maneuver re-signing Swayman to a significant contract while Linus Ullmark is clearly the 1A right now. Swayman’s age fits in with the core of McAvoy, Lindholm, Pastrnak(assuming he re-signs), DeBrusk, etc. Ullmark is not close to being done in his career and could help the team transition to the next core, but would Don Sweeney want to carry almost $10m in his goaltending tandem? I think not.
While the Bruins may have one of the weakest prospect pools in the entire NHL, their goaltending depth is superb. Could the likes of Bussi, Keyser, and DiPietro waiting for opportunities force Sweeney’s hand into making changes?
My Prediction:
Swayman will sign a four-year $4m AAV ($16m) extension after this season and will be touted as the future 1A in Boston.
His playoff numbers are affected by the fact he never started a series, but came in after Ullmark imploded in both series. Very hard to put the blame on Him for those numbers. He had a demoralized team playing in front of him both times.
I don’t see his playoff short comings affecting his contract. The other comp contracts all had minimal playoff experience, if any, and landed their deals. It’ll be interesting to see if the Bruins can make something work short term.