Cam Neely completely botches negotiations with Jeremy Swayman

Yesterday was quite a day of drama for the Boston Bruins.

After team president Cam Neely insinuated that the team had offered unsigned RFA goaltender Jeremy Swayman a $64 million contract, Swayman's agent Lewis Gross flat out called Neely a liar.

“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.”

Gross and his agency SPM hockey then posted a 'Marc Andre Fleury' inspired Instagram photo that showed Swayman being stabbed in the back with a bear labelled 'Cam Neely'. You'll, of course, remember when Fleury's agent Allan Walsh posted a similar photo but with a sword labelled 'Peter DeBoer' stabbing Fleury in the back.

Check it out:

So... clearly things aren't going well in Beantown.

How did we get here?

How did Neely and the Bruins fumble this negotiation so poorly? They've had over a year to sign Swayman to a fair deal. They went ahead and traded Linus Ullmark, giving Swayman all the negotiating power. Did they... did the Bruins just think that Swayman would sign a sweetheart deal because he's a nice guy? I truly don't understand the strategy here, if there is one in play at all. To me, Neely sounds like a man who's frustrated with the position that he put himself in. And this is becoming and all too familiar situation with the Bruins.

Read below for our earlier report on this story, published today by Hockey Feed staff writer Jonathan Larrivee.

Things just got very ugly between restricted free agent goaltender Jeremy Swayman and his current team, the Boston Bruins.

Swayman and the Bruins have been deadlocked in a highly publicized contract dispute, one that appears to have no end in sight, and on Monday morning things turned ugly as the Bruins began openly negotiating with Swayman and his representative through the media.

Things took an ominous turn during the Bruins media availability on Monday when general manager Don Sweeney and head coach Jim Montgomery both made comments that indicated that Swayman was unlikely to be the team's starting goaltender on opening night of the regular season. That was bad enough, but things took an even worse turn when it was time for team president Cam Neely to step up to the microphone.

When Neely was asked about the situation surrounding Swayman, he effectively leaked what the Bruins' latest offer to Swayman had been. Neely didn't explicitly state a number of years, but did indicate how much Swayman stood to earn following the Bruins most recent offer.

"I know that I’d have 64 million reasons why I’d be playing right now," said Neely revealing how much the Bruins have offered the goaltender.

While Neely did not go into detail about the offer, you have to believe that what he is referencing here is an 8 year contract that would carry an average annual value and cap hit of $8 million per season. That would work out to the total of $64 million that Neely has mentioned, which to be fair to the Bruins is a substantial offer.

That being said it also clearly hasn't been enough to get Swayman to sign on the dotted line, and Neely provided some insight as to why that might be the case. Swayman has previously made statements indicating that he is trying to set the market, not only for himself, but for goaltenders across the National Hockey League. When Neely was asked if that was indeed still the case, the Bruins president answered in the affirmative.

"I do," said Neely.

This one has definitely turned ugly and there is unfortunately no end in sight.