Bruins win 2 without Bergeron and Krejci, push Panthers to brink
Jim Montgomery had given some thought to starting Jeremy Swayman in Game 4 of the Bruins’ first-round series against the Panthers on Sunday.
Linus Ullmark was very good in Friday’s Game 3, but there were several reasons a switch to Swayman could have made sense. Ullmark had not started four straight games since November and he has been dealing with something that left him as a game-time decision for Game 3. Building in a little extra rest in the middle of the series wouldn’t have been the worst idea, especially with how good Swayman himself was in the second half of the regular season.
Ullmark and Swayman both did some on-ice work Saturday, and a final decision was to be made after that. Montgomery, however, wasn’t even present for that skate. He would not get to see for himself how they looked before the decision was made. He didn’t need to.
Goalie coach Bob Essensa was there, and that was really all that mattered. As he has done all season, Montgomery would be deferring to Essensa when it came to deciding Boston’s starting goalie for the next game.
Essensa decided Ullmark was in the right state physically and mentally to keep his momentum rolling, and so Ullmark got the start. Unsurprisingly, Essensa was right. Ullmark stopped 41 of the 43 shots he faced in a 6-2 Bruins win.
Essensa has been the Bruins’ goalie coach since 2003, taking the job a year after his 12-year NHL playing career came to an end. Montgomery, who was hired last summer, is the fifth different head coach he has worked under.
Montgomery did not need any time to get to know Essensa or learn his ways. He trusted “Goalie Bob” right from the jump.
“It’s been a Day 1 thing, and I have never second-guessed it,” Montgomery said earlier this season. “He’s great. He has a great feel for who should go where, when. He has a great rapport with his goaltenders.”
It’s that great rapport that allows Essensa to have such a great feel. Knowing all the technical aspects of his goalies’ games -- when they’re on, when they’re a little off, and why -- is crucial, but so too is knowing them as people.
“He’s a very hard, diligent worker in terms of all the details of each and every one of his goalies and getting to know them and tweaking them and working on the technical side of things, but also spending a lot of time with them, getting to know them as people and how they react to situations,” general manager Don Sweeney said of Essensa on Monday.
Sweeney is involved in bigger-picture discussions about goaltending plans, such as season-long workloads and overall approach to the postseason (i.e. whether to ride one goalie or rotate), but the game-to-game starter decisions are left to Montgomery and Essensa, which really means it’s left to Essensa.
“We try to do things collectively in the organization. Ultimately the coaches decide who plays but how we get there... management, medical staff, everybody weighs in trying to make the best collective decision we possibly can,” Sweeney said. “Ultimately, when you’re talking about putting a person in net, that’s Monty and Bob’s decision.”
The personal care Sweeney described has been a hallmark of Essensa’s coaching since he took the job. One of the first goalies he worked with upon taking the job in 2003 was current NESN analyst and WEEI Sunday Skate host Andrew Raycroft, who won the Calder Trophy as the NHL’s rookie of the year that season.
Asked on The Skate Podcast earlier this year what makes Essensa so good at his job, Raycroft immediately went to the personal side of things.
“First off, he’s just a great person. You talk about genuine and authentic and caring, it starts with that,” Raycroft said. “He has a great demeanor. Never high, never low, never would get mad at somebody. So, he’s endearing to everybody. And there’s a lot to longevity in this sport and in this business to being likable by all kinds of different coaches that he’s gone through … He’s been around a lot because he’s really well liked.”
Raycroft’s Calder was the first of many trophies won by Bruins goalies during Essensa’s tenure. Tim Thomas won two Vezina Trophies in 2009 and 2011 and a Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP when Boston won the Stanley Cup in 2011. Tuukka Rask added another Vezina in 2014 and established himself as one of the NHL’s premier goalies for the better part of a decade.
The Bruins have won three Jennings Trophies for allowing the fewest goals in the league with three different goalie tandems -- Thomas and Manny Fernandez in 2008-09, Rask and Jaroslav Halak in 2019-20, and Ullmark and Swayman this season.
Ullmark is favored to add another Vezina this year after leading the league in wins (40), save percentage (.938) and goals-against average (1.89). On the one hand, you could say that it’s hard to make the wrong goaltending decision when you have two goalies as good as Ullmark and Swayman have been this year. On the other, Essensa is a big reason why both goalies have had so much success.
Ullmark, for instance, has changed his game under Essensa’s tutelage, with Fluto Shinzawa of The Athletic recently detailing how Ullmark has incorporated more “backflow” or “drift.” The change in technique didn’t come naturally to Ullmark and he resisted it at first, but Essensa’s track record and the relationship he had developed with Ullmark just in Ullmark’s first season in Boston made it impossible to completely ignore Essensa’s suggestion.
Ullmark likes that Essensa challenges him.
“I just love Bob,” Ullmark said in January after being named an All-Star for the first time. “We’ve had great conversations throughout these one and a half years now and grown closer and closer each day. We butt heads sometimes, but we can always agree upon something in the end. I like that. I don’t want some yaysayer or whatever.
“I want someone that I can bounce ideas off and have a conversation with, and I also want him to be honest with me and say, ‘This is not good enough.’ Because if I don’t get to hear that, I can’t improve. I don’t want someone to just pat my back all the time and say, ‘You did a good job.’ As the goaltender, you want to be able to make all the saves. So we’ve found that kind of back-and-forth relationship now that I really enjoy.”
When you combine Essensa’s experience, success, relationship-building, patience and, yes, a sometimes firm hand, you get a coach goalies want to listen to.
“Having ideas on how to play the game, but not forcing it down someone’s throat. It’s not ‘my way or the highway,’” Raycroft said. “You see with Ullmark and Swayman, their game’s been adjusted over the last couple years. They’re drifting and they have a little bit of momentum at all times … Once it starts to work, you have belief in it, on top of the belief you already have that the guy cares about you.”
And because Essensa’s methods have worked so well for so long, one Bruins head coach after another has had belief in him, with Montgomery being the latest.
Of course Essensa doesn’t get everything right 100% of the time. No coach does. There have been times it’s been fair to at least question him, like two postseasons ago when Essensa and then-head coach Bruce Cassidy decided to stick with a banged-up Rask rather than turn to a then-rookie Swayman.
But far more often than not, Essensa makes the right call, just like he did for Sunday’s Game 4. As long as he does, it’s easy to see why Montgomery doesn’t second-guess him.
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