The Bruins’ goaltending has been awesome this season. Duh.
Linus Ullmark leads the NHL in wins (32), save percentage (.938) and goals-against average (1.89). He is the clear front-runner to win the Vezina Trophy.
After getting off to a little bit of a slow start, tandem-mate Jeremy Swayman has also been excellent over the last three months. He is 11-1-3 since Dec. 17 and ranks third in the league in save percentage (.932) and GAA (1.98) during that time, right behind Ullmark and Minnesota’s Filip Gustavsson in both.
All of that is impressive enough. But it’s when you pull back and compare the Bruins’ goaltending to the rest of the league that you realize just how big of a gap there is. And then when you compare that gap to other NHL seasons, well, you realize that Ullmark and Swayman are doing something historic.
Let’s start here: The Bruins have a team save percentage of .930. As Matt Porter recently noted in the Boston Globe, that is the best mark since the 2012-13 Ottawa Senators, who went .933 in a lockout-shortened 48-game season. It’s the best in an 82-game season since the 2010-11 Bruins, who finished at .930 and went on to win the Stanley Cup, with Tim Thomas leading the way. The best season in Hockey-Reference’s records (which go back to 1959-60 for team save percentages) was the 1968-69 St. Louis Blues, who rode a veteran Hall of Fame tandem of Jacques Plante and Glenn Hall to a .934 mark.
What makes the Bruins’ .930 mark even more impressive, though, is that the second-place team is the New York Islanders at .916, and the league average is .900. The league average has steadily declined over the last eight years -- from a modern high of .911 in 2014-15 -- as the NHL has opened up and goal-scoring has increased. And yet here are the Bruins, stopping shots at near-record levels and lapping the field.
If the Bruins maintain that 14-point gap over second place -- and they’ve been right in that neighborhood for most of the season -- it would be the largest gap between first and second in team save percentage since 1983-84. That year, Billy Smith, Roland Melanson and the New York Islanders finished at .899, which was 15 points better than the second-place Philadelphia Flyers at .884.
The biggest gap between first and second in the 64 years Hockey-Reference has data for is a record also held by the 1968-69 Blues. Their record .934 mark was 16 points better than the second-place Flyers that year.
That 1983-84 Islanders tandem was 28 points better than the league average of .871, an average that was tied for the lowest ever. The previous season’s Islanders team, which was the last of their four straight Cup winners, was the last one to finish at least 30 points better than the league average, going .906 in a league that averaged .873. That 33-point gap ties the 1974-75 Los Angeles Kings, led by Hall of Famer Rogie Vachon, for the largest on record (they went .922 in an .889 league).
The last team to even finish 25 points better than average was the 1984-85 Flyers, a Cup finalist led by Pelle Lindbergh that went .899 in a year the league average was .873. Not even the Buffalo Sabres during Dominik Hasek’s prime did that, although they came close a couple times, going 23 points above average in both 1997-98 and 1998-99.
If you’re wondering about goals against, the Bruins are making history there as well. Their 2.08 goals against per game is 0.44 goals per game better than the second-place Carolina Hurricanes and more than a full goal better than the league average of 3.16. It’s the best mark since the 2011-12 Blues, who rode career years from Brian Elliott and Jaroslav Halak to finish at 1.89 goals against per game.
The last time one team finished more than 0.44 goals per game ahead of second place was 1990-91, when Ed Belfour’s Chicago Blackhawks finished 0.47 goals ahead of Patrick Roy’s Canadiens (2.64 to 3.11). The biggest gap ever was -- you guessed it -- 1968-69, when Plante and Hall had the Blues at 2.07, more than half a goal better than the second-place New York Rangers (2.58).
The last time a team finished more than a goal per game better than the league average was 1988-89, when Roy’s Habs finished at 2.73 goals against per game and the NHL average was 3.74. The biggest gap between first and league average came courtesy of the 1981-82 Canadiens, whose 2.79 mark was an absurd 1.22 goals better than the league average of 4.01 (which was the highest average since 1943-44, by the way).
What does it all mean for the rest of this season? Obviously that depends on whether Ullmark and/or Swayman keep it up, but to put this in a little more perspective for the playoffs: If the Bruins continue to get goaltending that is this much better than anyone else in the league in the postseason, they would get three more saves over the course of a seven-game series than the team with the second-best goaltending, with shots being equal. Their goaltending would save seven more goals in a seven-game series than a team getting league-average goaltending. That’s the kind of advantage that decides series.
So, there you go. You knew Ullmark and Swayman have been great this season. Now you know just how historically great the Bruins’ goaltending has actually been. Barring some sort of late-season dip, you can add it to the long list of ways this season has been historic so far.
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