They had trust from the start.
David Pastrnak focused on his play. His agent, J.P. Barry, kept on discussing numbers and details with Bruins general manager Don Sweeney.
Diligence and patience by both sides wound up with Pastrnak on Thursday signing the richest deal in franchise history — and one that could wind up looking like a Black-and-Gold bargain.
Pastrnak put his name on an eight-year, $90 million contract extension, which beginning next season will pay him an average salary of $11.25 million per season. He could have tested the market as an unrestricted free agent this summer, perhaps after a postseason that could have increased his value.
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“I didn’t really worry about it much. Especially when I got to the rink, it was off my mind,” said Pastrnak, who turns 27 in May and will be 35 when the deal expires in 2031. “Obviously at home, sometimes you think about it. It’s a little different. We are older. You’re not making that decision alone.”
Pastrnak, who arrived here as an 18-year-old from Havirov, Czechia, said he and his Swedish fiancée, Rebecca Rohlsson, have made Boston their “home away from home.” He also noted that he grew closer with Sweeney during the negotiations. The two came together in September 2017 on Pastrnak’s current deal, a six-year, $40 million contract worth $6.667 million per season.
Until this deal happened, Sweeney said, he was anxious. But he wasn’t stressed out.
“He indicated all along this is what he would like to do,” Sweeney said. “He was patient.”
Officially, Pastrnak is now the centerpiece of the next core of this franchise. The team eventually will belong to him and Charlie McAvoy, plus Hampus Lindholm, Pavel Zacha, Linus Ullmark, and whoever else is in for the long haul. The Bruins eventually will see the retirements of Patrice Bergeron, David Krejci, and Brad Marchand, but Pastrnak believes the transition will be seamless.
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“I’m very confident of moving forward,” Pastrnak said. “We’ve been learning from them every day, and we are to this day. We know [their retirement] unfortunately might come. We will make sure we are ready with Charlie and the younger core. We had a hell of a [group of] guys to show us the way.”
Long before he put pen to paper, Pastrnak had an appreciation for how Bergeron, Krejci, and Marchand have never played for another franchise.
“It’s an amazing accomplishment to play your career with one team,” Pastrnak said, “and that’s definitely what was stuck in my head going into this negotiation.”
Sweeney said it’s difficult to project a rise in Pastrnak’s performance as he reaches his late 20s.
“He’s having a really, really good year, so that’s what we hope, that he’ll continue to have good years,” Sweeney said. “You just never know. He’s an elite player, scoring at an elite level, regular season and playoffs. You hope that’ll continue.”
The league’s second-leading goal scorer (42 entering Thursday) and fourth-leading scorer (80 points) will carry the sixth-highest salary-cap charge in the NHL, behind Nathan MacKinnon ($12.6 million), Connor McDavid ($12.5 million), Artemi Panarin ($11.64 million; the only winger making more), Auston Matthews ($11.64 million), and Erik Karlsson ($11.5 million).
He will make 13.6 percent of next season’s salary cap upper limit. Since the cap fluctuates by year, comparing players by that figure makes for a more even comparison. By percentage of cap, Pastrnak will rank 11th in the league behind McDavid (16.7 percent), MacKinnon (15.3), Matthews (14.6), Sidney Crosby and Karlsson (both 14.5), Panarin (14.3), Anze Kopitar and Carey Price (both 14.0), Drew Doughty and John Tavares (both 13.8).
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The maximum percentage of the cap a player can sign for is 20 percent, a line that has not been approached.
According to CapFriendly, the Bruins have a projected $72.9 million in salary commitments for next season, not including $4.7325 million in performance bonuses that can be split between this year and next.
Other than free-agents-to-be Connor Clifton and Dmitry Orlov, the Bruins have their defense locked up for next season. Ullmark is signed through 2025. Jeremy Swayman will be a restricted free agent.
The forward group will be in flux, with only Pastrnak, Marchand, Zacha, Charlie Coyle, Jake DeBrusk, and A.J. Greer under contract.
With Pastrnak as the headliner, the Bruins don’t see a decline in their future.
“You never know, but that’s certainly the plan with our back end and goaltending,” team president Cam Neely said. “We’ll have some work to do up front in the next couple of years, we recognize that. But we still should be very competitive.”
Matt Porter can be reached at matthew.porter@globe.com. Follow him @mattyports.