I really don't think it's unreasonable for him to ask for an AAV of 10 if the team wants an eight-year deal. (Not saying that means everyone should agree with him, Bruins management included.)
He'd be giving up huge potential value signing a long deal when the cap is going up.
As a premier player at a premier position, he'd also be foolish not to demand lockout protection. Why should my limited-time career earnings suffer because Jeremy Jacobs wants to only pay for half a season again?
Meanwhile, these are still humans, and Swayman was clearly bothered by what happened at his arbitration hearing. Forget wanting to do the Bruins any favors. He might specifically want to stick it to them now because he feels like they insulted him so they could save a few hundred thousand dollars before. "What's good for the goose...."
And if Swayman has told his agent "Get me the most money possible," his agent almost certainly turned around after they traded ullmark and said, "Actually, this higher number is where we're at." Moving Ullmark gave Swayman leverage and he might now be using it, much to the chagrin of Don Sweeney and Cam Neely.
Look, we don't really know anything. He might come in at an AAV of 7 for 8 years. Don Sweeney's single best trait as a GM is signing his star players to team-friendly deals. But that requires the player wanting to do something team-friendly. If Swayman doesn't want to do that---or actually wants to make sure the team really has to go beyond what it would like---this is going to drag on.
It's still not September 1st, my personal "okay maybe let's officially worry" date, so for me this is still nothing more than a thought exercise, but it's a good one during the dog days of the off-season.
records.nhl.com
It seems to me like you just want to argue and about shit I never said at that. Well, I think we understand our relative positions here, no need to keep it going.
