Early Trading: Bruins and Swayman reaching boiling point?

Now that Bruins president Cam Neely made his feelings known about the Jeremy Swayman contract negotiations and Swayman's agent responded, where do the two sides go from here? How far can the stalemate go? Gino Reda is joined by TSN Hockey Insider Chris Johnston to discuss.

GINO REDA: What the heck is going in with Jeremy Swayman and the Boston Bruins? With the details on that, here’s our Insider Chris Johnston with news that just can’t wait.

CJ, Cam Neely took a shot at his restricted free agent, saying there’s $64 million reasons for Swayman to sign right now. Swayman’s agent, Lewis Gross, was not happy, saying he’s extremely disappointed by what Neely had to say so publicly.

How ugly is this going to get, CJ?

CHRIS JOHNSTON: Well, I guess the hope would be that it’s seen its ugliest point, because certainly Monday was not a positive day in the negotiations, in this process that’s been going on for months, frankly, between Jeremy Swayman and the Bruins.

I think what’s going to happen now is that there’s going to be a little bit of a time out, sort of, period. Everyone will take a moment to take a breath and cool off, and obviously at some point they’re going to have to re-engage.

And I think when they do that, what will be interesting to me is, Lewis Gross’ statement was very carefully worded, I’d put it, on Monday night, saying that the $64 million had not been offered before that press conference. I do think the Bruins have got there, even if they weren’t there prior to Cam Neely making those comments publicly, and so what does that mean? Does the mean that’s the top offer Boston is willing to give? Is there any more wiggle room that can be had? I don’t think that there’s been any exploration on that at this point in time.

But that will be what will be interesting when they do re-engage, and right now it just seems like a cooling off period is probably best for everyone, because negotiating a contract like this publicly probably isn’t too productive.

REDA: I understand a cooling off period would be effective, if we were in August. But we’re in October now, CJ.

JOHNSTON: Right.

REDA: The regular season is just about to open up. How much longer can these two sides stay apart before they finally got to come to terms? Because if the season starts without Swayman in net, that could hurt both sides pretty badly.

JOHNSTON: For sure, and I think it’s notable the Bruins have already said that Joonas Korpisalo is going to start their first game, that even if a deal were to be done right now while we’re recording this, there just wouldn’t be enough practice time for Jeremy Swayman to get in a position where he would be ready to start the regular season.

So, for all intents and purposes, we’re already looking at Boston starting the year without him as an active player, so how long can it go on? It can go until Dec. 1, that’s when a restricted free agent has to have a contract signed and registered by 5 p.m. that day, to be eligible to play in that season.

At this point in time, it’s not very productive to offer a prediction, but it could go that far. I mean, you have, obviously, two sides that are pretty entrenched in their positions. There has been a pretty big gap here in the negotiations. The Bruins are slowly inching up to get that $64 million reasons to report to the team, but we’ll have to see where that leaves Swayman, how the start of the season potentially could be a factor for him if it compels him, maybe, to take a little bit less than what he’s been looking for to this point.

But it just feels like this is a negotiation that could go on yet for some time, and especially once you get into the year, basically the Bruins got to go on, in terms of the team, without Swayman and try to get through that stretch of time before he is ultimately signed.

REDA: When things go this public, they can get pretty ugly pretty quickly. By the way, if Swayman were to sign for $64 million, that would be $8 million a season. That number would only make him the sixth highest-paid goalie in the league.

More on this and other hot topics around the league on the full version of the Insider Trading with CJ, Darren, and Pierre.