cptjeff
Reprehensible User
It came out that the offer had been $7.8m/yr. Not technically 8, but close enough that the agent (Lew Gross) was being more than a little dishonest with the outrage. And the Bruins probably fully expected him to respond to that offer with "can we just make it 8", which they would have then accepted. You may not trust management, but IMO it's pretty clear Neely was being more honest than Gross in this one.1) The $64M was Neely's comment and the Agent publicly stated it was the first time they've heard that. I didn't follow it closely to know how that sugared out.
The "resetting the goalie market" was another comment from Neely about what Swayman's ask had been. Remember, Gross is the guy behind the Nylander holdout and massive contract. He's extremely aggressive in his asks and extremely aggressive in his tactics. And I think he would have been happy to do that again, this reads to me like Swayman telling Gross to take what's on the table now in order to not miss the season.
As for fans siding with management, the interests of fans are aligned with management. better value contracts means more better players, which means better teams. It's a salary cap world where the quality of a roster *is* a zero sum game. And one player getting more means other players get less. And the overall pool of player money is fixed- if you want to root for the little guy, remember that the bigger contracts for stars get, the less is available for the role players who get paid a lot less and whose careers are a lot shorter.