On Tuesday, ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski released his ranking of all 32 NHL teams’ goalie tandems, with input from coaches, former players and analytics experts.
As Wyshynski notes, the Bruins are a team he has been able to pencil in close to the top of these rankings for many years. This year, however, he has the Bruins outside the top 10, as their new tandem of Linus Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman comes in at 13. Wyshynski mentions the possibility of Tuukka Rask returning midseason, but does not factor him into the equation for now.
The top spot on the list goes to the Islanders with Semyon Varlamov and Ilya Sorokin. The Lightning are second with Andrei Vasilevskiy and Brian Elliott, although the second name there could really be just about anyone given Vasilevskiy’s excellence and true workhorse minutes.
On the one hand, the 13th-place ranking for the Bruins is probably fair in the sense that the Ullmark-Swayman duo is relatively unproven compared to some others around the league, and especially compared to the Rask-Jaroslav Halak tandem the Bruins had the last few years.
The 22-year-old Swayman has made just 10 NHL starts and this will be his first full professional season, while the 28-year-old Ullmark -- signed to a four-year deal this offseason -- has topped 30 games played in a season twice.
That said, the upside of the Ullmark-Swayman tandem is high. There are plenty of reasons to believe they could end up much higher on a list like this by the end of the season.
In admittedly fairly small sample sizes, Ullmark and Swayman both had excellent underlying numbers last season. According to Natural Stat Trick, among the 66 goalies who played at least 400 five-on-five minutes last season, Swayman finished first in five-on-five save percentage (.945), first in goals saved above average per 60 minutes (0.94), and first in high-danger save percentage (.891). Ullmark finished sixth (.937), sixth (0.60), and ninth (.861) in those categories, respectively.
Whether the two can keep up that level of play, or something close to it, for a full season is a fair question. Wanting to see that actually play out before completely buying in is understandable.
If they can, though, then the Bruins will be right back to having at least a top-10 goalie tandem, and possibly one of the very best in the league.
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