The Bruins officially opened training camp on Wednesday, with the team's first practice of the new season scheduled for Thursday morning. Jeremy Swayman is not expected to be on the ice for it.
Amid conflicting reports about Swayman's contract situation, Boston general manager Don Sweeney met with the media Wednesday afternoon and addressed Swayman right off the top as part of his opening statement.
"Jeremy Swayman will not be in attendance tomorrow on the ice," Sweeney said. "He has chosen to wait, and rightfully so, until a contract is settled. It's our intention to continue to negotiate a contract. I'm disappointed that, when you set things as a priority in the general manager spot, you do your best to try and accomplish that, and I haven't been able to do that yet.
"But I will make everybody aware that some of the inconsistencies that have been reported are completely inaccurate. I think that being a representative of the Bruins and how we do business and try and keep things close to the vest and respect everybody's own privacy, I will answer questions, but I'm not going to go into depth on the negotiations and talks we've had, because we're excited about the players that are here, and we're going to move forward. As I said, I'm disappointed, but at the end of the day, I'm optimistic because I think we'll find a landing spot before December 1st."
Dec. 1 is the deadline for restricted free agents to sign a contract in order to be eligible to play in the 2024-25 season. If Swayman doesn't sign a contract by that date, he will not be able to play all season and will not get paid. Obviously, all sides would hope to reach an agreement long before then and not have this drag out for two months of the regular season.
There had been some reason for optimism this week. TSN's Darren Dreger said on Tuesday that he was getting "positive vibes coming out of Boston." Then on Wednesday morning, Courtney Cox said on The Greg Hill Show that she had heard from sources that a deal was "done" and that it could get announced as early as sometime Wednesday.
Asked about the report that the deal was done, Sweeney said that was "100 percent inaccurate." That aligns with Rich Keefe's contrasting report on Jones & Keefe Wednesday that a deal has not been finalized yet and that Swayman would not be on the ice to start training camp.
Sweeney also took exception to a report from a few weeks ago from Ryan Whitney of Barstool Sports' Spittin' Chiclets podcast. Whitney said at the time that the Bruins had not returned calls from Swayman's camp in three weeks. Sweeney said there has been "constant communication."
"I laugh, because my son loves the Spit Up On Yourself podcast," Sweeney said, purposely twisting the name Spittin' Chiclets. "I'll go back to the inaccuracies of what everybody's reporting. It's great entertainment, but at the end of the day, there's not a lot of fact-checking going on there.
"I think it's bullshit that somebody says I wouldn't return a call for three weeks," Sweeney added when asked another follow-up later. "That's inaccurate. … I don't listen to the podcast. As I said, my son loves Biz (co-host Paul Bissonnette), thinks he's fabulous. And he's a great entertainer. But at the end of the day, they're inaccurate."
As for where the Swayman negotiations go from here, Sweeney said he will just keep working at it.
"I'll continue to work every day. It's not unlike David Pastrnak and Charlie McAvoy and Brandon Carlo," Sweeney said, referencing previous restricted free agents who entered training camp without contracts.
"It's a process that, seemingly every year there's a few players, and this is a year that we have one. I have to continue to do my job, I have to respect the position that Jeremy and his camp has taken, and continue to try and find common ground."
