It’s time for Bruins to ride Jeremy Swayman as far as he’ll take them
If the Bruins have said it once, they’ve said it a thousand times: They have faith in both Jeremy Swayman and Linus Ullmark. So much so that the Bruins entered the playoffs with the by-design decision to give each a start in the first two games of their first-round series against the Maple Leafs.
And based on what Jim Montgomery said about a potential ‘playoff rotation’ late in the regular season, it was entirely possible that the Bruins’ plans included going four games deep with the rotation before making a feel-based switch.
But after gutsy Game 3 and 4 victories in Toronto, after a downright sensational performance in Boston’s do-or-die Game 7, and now a stellar Game 1 outing against the Panthers, the truth is that it would be downright insane to move away from the 25-year-old Swayman at this point. And the Bruins know it.
“Well, we talked about it as a staff and because of the emotional high of Game 7 and travel, we contemplated going with Ullmark [in Game 1] because we have so much confidence in him too,” Montgomery admitted following Boston’s 5-1 Game 1 victory over the Panthers. “But when a guy is playing that well it’s like, don’t outsmart yourself.”
In net for his fifth start in 10 days (something he’s never done at this level, let alone in the playoffs), Swayman’s night began with a huge right-pad save less than a minute into action, and from there, the forcefield only intensified. And as the frustration started to mount for a Florida offense that made the Lightning’s Andrei Vasilevskiy look oddly mortal in their five-game demolition of Tampa Bay in the previous round, they sent chaos and havoc to Swayman’s crease.
Swayman’s reaction? A huge smile and even laughter.
It would’ve been enough to disgust even Joker’s Murray Franklin.
But that’s “Sway.”
“It seems like you can never rattle the guy,” Bruins defenseman Mason Lohrei said of Swayman. “He’s always smiling, always singing along to songs. It’s relaxing. I see it and makes you remember it’s just a game. If he can go out there and play as well as he does and have fun, it makes you do the same.”
“We’re all so dedicated to each other [and] I wanted to come here to play for guys like Sway,” Brandon Carlo, who touched down in Florida shortly before 6 p.m. on Monday after being with his wife as she went into labor following Game 7, offered. “You know, just that guy in general. He puts the biggest smile on my face out there on the ice. I have so much fun playing with him. A lot of love between the two of us.”
When things have had the chance to go off the rails, a smiling Swayman has been there to rescue the Bruins from danger at every stop and turn.
I mean, it’s hit the point where it takes the Bruins beating themselves for a team to beat Swayman. In the last 120 minutes of hockey, the only goals to beat Swayman came after Carlo wiped out along the wall and gave the Auston Matthews and William Nylander combo a 2-on-1 opportunity and after a brutal defensive-zone turnover from Charlie McAvoy put Aleksander Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk on a 2-on-1. Those duos really don’t need any extra help, but if you give it to them, they’ll take it.
Sticking to Swayman’s Game 1 alone, the Alaskan-born smiling lunatic finished with 38 saves on 39 shots faced, and went a perfect 9-for-9 on high-danger shots faced. Swayman also finished Game 1 with an expected goals against of 3.31, but allowed just one by the night’s end.
For the playoffs as a whole, Swayman is now up to a ridiculous .955 save percentage — he somehow made his playoff-best .950 save percentage go up in this game — and has been downright absurd. Swayman’s also posted 10.72 goals saved above average this postseason (per NaturalStatTrick.com), which is not only tops among all playoff goalies, but a staggering 7.11 better than second-place Jake Oettinger and his 3.61 GSAA. Moneypuck.com, meanwhile, has Swayman at 10.9 goals saved above expected, almost double that of second-place Igor Shesterkin and his 5.8 GSAE.
There’s just no way the Bruins can sit this guy right now. Even if they want to do it in the name of keeping him fresh or avoiding burnout. Or even with their trust in Ullmark. The very idea of turning away from Swayman right now is simply preposterous given what he’s done to this point.
The sample size is still entirely too small to start planning anything beyond the very next game on the schedule, of course, but in an era that’s been defined by absurd goaltending runs, whether it was Tim Thomas in 2011 or Tuukka Rask in 2013 and 2019, Swayman is doing what those guys did back then.
He’s making it downright impossible to take the net away from him.
“[Swayman’s] battle level inspires and gives our bench a lot of energy,” Montgomery noted.
And he’s doing it with a smile on his face and songs coming out of his head.
