True, but the rewards for the Bruins of Sway playing better than a 9 mil goalie aren't nearly as beneficial as the risks of Swayman suddenly becoming, say a 3-4 million dollar goalie, which is to say someone who's not a starter. You see it happen way more that goalies don't live up to their contracts than you do goalies that do. Martin Jones, Matt Murray, Lehner, Campbell, Cal Peterson etc. How many actually do live up to their contracts? Vasi?
Frankly, UNLESS you're playing like one of the 3-4 best goalies in the world, there's not a huge difference between beyond that and the 20th. If I'm a GM, I'm absolutely not digging that kind of hole unless I can say with absolutely no uncertainty that that's who they are. I don't think any of us can say that about Swayman yet.
Forsure... for the record, if i was a GM, paying a goalie #1 money is very close to the bottom of the list of things I'd want to do.
Vasilevsky was an unremarkable 2.90 / .900 in 52 games this year. Bobrovsky was $10m in dead weight his first 2 yearsi n Florida.
However, there are a subsect of GMs that either believe it's the right thing to do, or do it out of "fear of the unknown", and for a GM in that position, you really can't ask for a better goalie to do an 8-year deal with than Jeremy Swayman.
25 years old. 3 years of full tandem experience. Call me crazy, but I'd much rather have Swayman at $9m x 8 today, then Shesterkin at $11.5m x 8 next year.
That being said, full disclosure, I'm a Leaf fan, and from an overall roster construction standpoint, think we're better off with quartet of Woll, Stolarz, Murray and Hildeby at a combined $3.3m on the cap this year, and $6.1m next year.