Their shots set up for arbitration

Unless there’s a negotiated meeting of the minds in the next few days, Jeremy Swayman and the Bruins will enter the salary arbitration meat grinder July 29, followed by Trent Frederic’s hearing Aug. 1.

GM Don Sweeney, with some $5.4 million remaining in cap space, will have to rearrange the roster slightly if both players go through the process and are awarded paydays in excess of that number. Given the historical landscape across the league, odds favor a negotiated settlement in the hours leading up to both hearings.

On Wednesday, the Jets and Gabriel Vilardi, one of the key assets acquired in the Pierre-Luc Dubois trade with the Kings, avoided their hearing and settled on a two-year deal at $3.44 million annually, a four-fold bump for Vilardi, 23, who wrangled a meager $825,000 out of the Kings for last season after terming out of his entry-level contract.

The Golden Knights and arbitration-bound Brett Howden also settled Wednesday, negotiating a two-year pact that carries a $1.9 million cap hit. Vegas still has some slimming down to do, Howden’s deal leaving the team $4.15 million over the cap, even after moving Reilly Smith’s $5 million off the books last month for a Penguins third-round draft pick in 2024.

Maple Leafs goalie Ilya Samsonov, with slightly more experience than Swayman (131 games vs. 88), entered arbitration Friday in search of $4.9 million, slightly more than double the $2.4 million the Leafs offered.

A comparable spread for Swayman would be, say, $2 million-$4 million, the middle ground of which would be ideal from the Bruins’ perspective. It would set them up for the coming season with Swayman and partner Linus Ullmark, the returning Vezina winner, making a combined $8 million — slightly less than 10 percent of the cap ceiling ($83.5 million) to cover the most important position.

Frederic, with 198 games and 54 points, has termed out of his second contract after making $1.15 million last season. There is no all-things-beingequal equation in all of this, but something approaching Howden’s $1.9 million would seem a decent payday for Frederic, who was chosen two picks after Howden in the first round of the 2016 draft.

Howden, a Tampa Bay draft pick, has delivered .294 points per game at the NHL level, while Frederic has popped for .273.