There has been plenty of discussion this week about Jeremy Swayman’s comments last weekend regarding his summer arbitration case. We covered that extensively here, so we’ll skip rehashing all of it in this post.
That discussion, however, has seemingly overshadowed recent reports that Swayman’s next contract negotiations may already be well underway. Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman has said multiple times that he thinks an extension could be on the horizon, and ESPN’s Emily Kaplan wrote last week that “a few people have told me to expect that to get done soon.”
So, what might that contract extension actually look like? That was a question we here at The Skate Podcast got asked as part of our most recent mailbag, which you can listen to above.
Here’s what I came up with as my guess – and I want to make it clear that this is just a guess: five years, $30 million ($6 million average annual value).
Here’s my thinking…
If you look at the highest-paid goalies for next season – taking out Carey Price, who for all intents and purposes is retired – there is a clear top tier of four:
Sergei Bobrovsky, Florida Panthers, $10 million
Andrei Vasilevskiy, Tampa Bay Lightning, $9.5 million
Connor Hellebuyck, Winnipeg Jets, $8.5 million
Ilya Sorokin, New York Islanders, $8.25 million
The 25-year-old Swayman does not yet have the resume of those goalies and will not approach that money. Bobrovsky had won two Vezina Trophies and was starting 60 games a year when he signed his current seven-year, $70 million contract in 2019. Vasilevskiy had won one Vezina and was similarly an established workhorse. He has won two Stanley Cups since signing for eight years and $76 million in 2019.
Hellebuyck and Sorokin just signed their contracts this past summer, with Hellebuyck getting seven years, $59.5 million, and Sorokin getting eight years, $66 million. Both are older (Hellebuyck 30, Sorokin 28), but again, both have accomplished more, too. Hellebuyck has won a Vezina, has finished top four in voting three other times, is the current favorite to win this year, and has led the league in games played four times. Sorokin was coming off a second-place Vezina finish and had started 50-plus games in back-to-back seasons.
Swayman has yet to top 40 starts in a season. He has zero Vezina votes to his name and just six playoff starts. All of that could be on its way to changing this season, but it hasn’t happened just yet.
After Sorokin at $8.25 million, you almost skip right over an entire pay tier before you get to the next-highest paid goalie, Anaheim’s John Gibson at $6.4 million. Then things get crowded, as there are 15 goalies slated to make between $4.9 million and $6.4 million next season.
We won’t run through all of them, but there are a few comparables worth highlighting:
Gibson signed for eight years, $6.4 million AAV in 2018. He was 25, the same age Swayman is now, but was also coming off a 60-start season and a conference finals run.
St. Louis’ Jordan Binnington was 27 when he signed for six years, $6M AAV in 2021. As Bruins fans will painfully recall, he had already backstopped the Blues to a Stanley Cup.
Seattle’s Philipp Grubauer, like Swayman, had almost exclusively been a platoon goalie before signing for six years, $5.9M AAV in 2021. He was an unrestricted free agent (vs. Swayman being a restricted free agent), but he was also four years older than Swayman is now.
The Rangers’ Igor Shesterkin was the same age as Swayman when he signed for four years, $5.67M AAV in 2021, but he had less than half as many career starts. New York bet on his upside, which immediately paid off when Shesterkin won the Vezina the next season.
Swayman’s goalie hug partner, Linus Ullmark, was turning 28 when the Bruins signed him for four years, $5M AAV in 2021. Ullmark won the Vezina last season and has proven to be worth every penny, but he had about the same amount of experience as Swayman does now when he signed, and Swayman is younger and has better numbers than Ullmark did at that point.
Perhaps the closest comparable in terms of situation at the time of signing would be Nashville’s Juuse Saros. Saros was 26 and a restricted free agent when he signed for four years, $5M AAV in Aug. 2021. After several years of backing up/platooning with Pekka Rinne, Saros had just taken control of the net that season and finished sixth in Vezina voting. Rinne retired that offseason, the Predators made Saros their workhorse after the extension, and he has been one of the best goalies in the NHL since. He is in line to cash in again after the 2024-25 season, when he’ll be 30 years old.
It’s been two and a half years since Saros and Ullmark signed their deals, so Swayman will probably come in higher than $5M AAV. How much higher is the question. That $8M+ neighborhood seems unlikely. Swayman’s camp would probably love to push for $7M. If talks drag into the offseason and Swayman can add some playoff success and maybe a top-five Vezina finish to his resume, that might be in play.
Otherwise, something around $6M feels about right. And a five-year term would give Swayman, like Saros, a chance to hit the market again at 30 and potentially cash in even more on a second big contract.