Four teams that would benefit most by trading for Bruins RFA Jeremy Swayman

Credit: Sam Navarro-USA TODAY Sports

It feels like there’s always one RFA who holds out until October each year. This time, it’s Jeremy Swayman.

The Boston Bruins have been at an impasse with their young starting goaltender all summer long, with leverage shifting firmly in Swayman’s favor in late June after the club traded 2023 Vezina Trophy winner Linus Ullmark to the Ottawa Senators.

Swayman is Boston’s best hope in goal, and everyone knows it. Even with their impressive depth on defense, the Bruins can’t realistically compete for the Stanley Cup with a tandem of Joonas Korpisalo and Brandon Bussi — and yet, here we are. With less than a week to go before their season opener, the Bruins still don’t have their top goaltender under contract.

The negotiations between Swayman and the Bruins spilled out into the public forum over the weekend, with Cam Neely making waves by hinting during a press conference that the club offered the goaltender a new deal worth $64 million, a figure Swayman’s representatives disputed. (Daily Faceoff‘s Frank Seravalli subsequently reported that the actual offer was closer to $62 million).

Now, the entire hockey world is waiting with baited breath to see what comes next in the Swayman saga. While it still feels like the most likely outcome is Swayman and the Bruins eventually finding common ground, it no longer seems inevitable.

What if the unthinkable comes to pass and Swayman is traded? Here are four teams that would stand to benefit the most by acquiring the 2023 William M. Jennings Award winner.

Chicago Blackhawks

Even with Connor Bedard in the fold, the Blackhawks are one of the NHL’s worst teams. They took some swings this offseason in a bid to get a little bit better, but their forward group still drops off enormously after Bedard, Teuvo Teravainen, Taylor Hall, and Tyler Bertuzzi — and that says nothing of their porous defensive group.

The Blackhawks can’t stay in the basement forever, especially not now that the clock is ticking on Bedard’s entry-level contract. But it also seems like they have yet to find their No. 1 goaltender of the future. Adam Gajan, a second-round pick of theirs in 2023, struggled in his first post-draft season with the USHL’s Green Bay Gamblers; Drew Commesso, their 2020 second-rounder, was just okay in his first AHL campaign with the Rockford IceHogs.

Swayman will turn 26 in November. He’s a fair bit older than Bedard, but most goaltenders come into their own long after their counterparts at forward and on defense. The Blackhawks also have oodles of cap space they can use to give the Anchorage, Alaska-born goaltender as much as he wants — potentially even $64 million (or more).

Colorado Avalanche

The Avalanche do not have the same level of financial flexibility as the Blackhawks, so any deal they’d make for Swayman would have to include some amount of cap equalization, most likely in the form of a salary dump. However, Colorado’s urgency for a solution in goal far outstrips that of Chicago and arguably every other team in the league.

Just take a look at the top four teams in the Central Division last season. Three of them have a clear-cut starting goaltender in the prime of his career: Dallas has Jake Oettinger, Nashville has Juuse Saros, and Winnipeg has Connor Hellebuyck. Meanwhile, the Avalanche have Alexandar Georgiev, a 28-year-old pending UFA who posted an uninspiring .897 save percentage over 63 games during the 2023-24 regular season.

The Avs simply didn’t get the saves they needed to go on a long playoff run last season. They proved themselves more than capable of winning games without a true top-tier goaltender during their run to the Stanley Cup in 2022, but that was with both Gabriel Landeskog and Valeri Nichushkin in the lineup throughout the playoffs. Colorado’s lineup just isn’t as strong as it once was. A goaltender like Swayman would do a lot to paper over the cracks in their foundation.

Detroit Red Wings

The Red Wings struggled enormously to dictate play in any meaningful way over large stretches of the 2023-24 season, relying instead on unsustainable shooting percentages to remain inexplicably in the hunt for the eighth playoff spot in the Eastern Conference until the final days of the race. Their major collapse in March felt like a foregone conclusion while also serving as a strong indication that major changes needed to happen in the summer.

Instead, the Red Wings embarked upon a frustratingly inert offseason, making minute changes in an apparent bid to disrupt the status quo as little as possible. Amidst their decisions to re-sign Patrick Kane and replace David Perron with Vladimir Tarasenko, the Red Wings went out and signed 37-year-old goaltender Cam Talbot to a two-year deal; he’ll most likely battle for playing time in Detroit with Ville Husso, Alex Lyon, and 2021 first-round pick Sebastian Cossa.

None of those options is particularly inspiring, with the possible exception of Cossa if he continues to build on his encouraging 2023-24 campaign. Adding a goaltender of Swayman’s caliber would work wonders toward bolstering the Red Wings’ aspirations as legitimate contenders-to-be. As it stands, it’s difficult to take them seriously.

Philadelphia Flyers

The Flyers seem to have patched up their relationship with Alexei Kolosov, their top young goaltender, after he had threatened to return to Russia instead of honoring his NHL contract. If everything goes according to plan, Kolosov — whose KHL track record is solid, if unspectacular — will split starts with Ivan Fedotov and Samuel Ersson this season until one of them plays his way into the starter’s job. They all have NHL upside, but there also isn’t a can’t-miss prospect in that group.

It can be a little difficult to pin down exactly where exactly the Flyers are in the metamorphosis, especially now that Matvei Michkov has arrived in North America. If Michkov can be as impactful right off the bat as, say, Kirill Kaprizov was in his own rookie season, the Flyers might just challenge for a playoff spot in the Metropolitan Division. But that would represent a pretty significant improvement from the 2023-24 season, when the Flyers finished sixth in the Metro and 11th in the East with 87 points in 82 games.

Would the Bruins have any appetite to send their prized young goaltender barely 300 miles away to Philly? It’s certainly tough to picture Swayman trading in his black and gold uniform for an orange one. But the Flyers have a bit of money to spend, they absolutely have a need for a legit starter, and it’s very easy to imagine John Tortorella rushing into Danny Briere’s office to endorse a move for a goaltending upgrade. It’s a fascinating prospect.

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