Shinzawa: The Bruins-Jeremy Swayman talks have gone sideways. It’s just business

BOSTON — Negotiations between Jeremy Swayman and the Boston Bruins have gone off the rails. Monday, president Cam Neely said, in a creative way, the team has made a $64 million offer. Lewis Gross, Swayman’s agent, responded later Monday that such an offer is fiction.

“We are extremely disappointed,” Gross posted on Instagram. “This was not fair to Jeremy. We will take a few days to discuss where we go from here.”

A solution, it seems, is nowhere in sight.

If Gross is going so far as to question Neely’s honesty, it is safe to say his client did not respond well to his boss’s declaration. It does not bode well for how Gross and general manager Don Sweeney will steer the talks back on track. Swayman is not designed to compromise when he feels slighted.

“Continued, consistent communication with his representatives,” Sweeney said, before Neely’s $64 million throwdown, of how he’ll proceed with Gross. “We still have a gap to bridge. We’re going to try to continue to do that.”

Sweeney and Gross have no choice but to clear the air. The stakes are too high.

It is a fool’s errand to determine whether it is Neely or Gross who is practicing fabrication. This is business, plain and simple. In such cases, the truth is regularly stretched when dollars and years — high numbers of both — are being discussed.

It was strictly business, then, that Neely, CEO Charlie Jacobs and coach Jim Montgomery all reached into the negotiating toolbox to disclose the offer, emphasize the Bruins are a cap team and that Joonas Korpisalo will be the Game 1 starter. None of it was personal. These were mechanisms, as cutting as they might seem, to advance negotiations and reinforce the brand.

In the same way, it was business that Gross fired back and just about called Neely, the head cheese and Hockey Hall of Famer, a liar. It was business that Gross declared he will take a few days to regroup, thus signaling returning swiftly to the negotiating table is not something he wishes to do.

Time will determine how this unfolds, and both parties believe time is in their favor.

For the Bruins, the stalemate’s silver lining is how it has elevated Korpisalo and Brandon Bussi up the organizational ladder. With the No. 1 goalie out of the picture, Korpisalo and Bussi have gained critical reps during preseason games and practices under the watch of goalie coach Bob Essensa.

So far, Korpisalo has taken advantage of the opportunity. He’s passed two preseason tests.

“Our staff has done a really good job of recognizing the players that are here. That’s where the focus has been,” Sweeney said. “Bob Essensa has worked — as I referenced earlier in camp, he would work extensively with all our goaltenders — and he feels comfortable with the work thus far that Korpisalo has put in.”

Concurrently, Swayman will take a moment, as Gross noted, in response to the $64 million offer his agent said he never received. Given Montgomery has already declared Game 1 as off the table, Swayman has little reason to put pen to paper in the days to come.

That might change.

The employer has options in Korpisalo and Bussi. If the Bruins play to their strengths during the first segment of the regular season, they can manage without Swayman.

The employee, meanwhile, has none.

If he is unsigned by mid-October, Swayman will miss his first paycheck. The second will follow at the end of the month.

The 25-year-old is coming off a $3.475 million 2023-24 salary. Swayman is not married. He does not have children. But even if he has stashed cash away for a rainy day, there is only so long a young man living in downtown Boston can be happy without income.

Not only that, Swayman would be missing out on everything accompanied by his wages: gameplay, competition, the company of his teammates. As for the latter, the results of an informal player poll after Neely’s comments were that Swayman had the backing of the room — to a point.

“The only time I could even see it getting a little bit weird,” said one player, granted anonymity to speak freely about a teammate and his employer, “would be if we didn’t start out well and we felt like he could be helping us.”

At the beginning of camp, Sweeney made sure to mention Dec. 1 twice — the drop-dead date for Swayman to sign a contract if he wants to play this season.

In such situations, labor always has more to lose than management.

Tempers are spiking on both sides. But Sweeney and Gross will lower the temperature and resume negotiations. Flareups are part of business. There is too much on the line for the disagreement to continue.

(Photo: Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)