The Boston Bruins’ 6-2 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning on Tuesday was a night of firsts in many ways. Mike Callahan played his first NHL game. Parker Wotherspoon scored his first NHL goal. Andrew Peeke scored his first goal as a Bruin. Matt Poitras set up the first goal in his first game back with Boston since Nov. 9.
But the number one star was number one himself: Jeremy Swayman. After making a season-high 40 saves in Saturday’s win over the Florida Panthers, Swayman topped it with 43 stops on Tuesday. At a point in the season when the Bruins need him most, Swayman is finally showing signs of breaking through to become a true workhorse goalie.
The Bruins have slipped in the playoff race since Christmas, most notably during a recent six-game losing streak. They are banged up, with Charlie McAvoy and Mark Kastelic joining Hampus Lindholm on injured reserve earlier Tuesday, not to mention Cole Koepke leaving the game injured after taking a hit to the head. They are in the midst of arguably their toughest stretch of the season schedule-wise.
And they are giving Swayman his heaviest workload to date, as he has now started four games in a row and eight of the last nine. That may have been a problem before Christmas, when Swayman was often struggling when he got three or four consecutive starts.
Now, however, Swayman is turning in some of his best performances of the season, all while handling a heavier post-Christmas workload than any other goalie in the NHL. He is the only goalie who has made eight starts since the holiday break, and he has played 35 more minutes and faced 40 more shots than any other goalie.
While the record stands at just 3-5-0, Swayman has a .925 save percentage during this stretch while facing one Stanley Cup contender after another and playing behind a defense that has bent and at times broken.
According to Natural Stat Trick, Swayman has faced 10 or more high-danger shots in six of his last seven games. He had faced that many just twice all season prior to this stretch. High-danger shots had been an issue for Swayman prior to Christmas, as he had consistently ranked at or near the bottom of the league in high-danger save percentage.
There has been a clear shift over the last few weeks, though. Forty goalies have played at least 200 minutes since Christmas, and Swayman ranks eighth in high-danger save percentage at .885, while facing more of those chances than any other goalie. His 10.79 goals saved above expected during that time lead the NHL.
The importance of Swayman’s improved play can’t be overstated. The Bruins are not playing very good hockey right now. They need to rediscover the defensive structure they had found when Joe Sacco first took over. Giving up 37 or more shots in four of their last five games, and all these high-danger chances, is not a recipe for success. Scoring has been a problem all season; maybe 10 goals in the last two games will finally mark a turning point, or maybe it will just be a two-game blip.
Regardless, the Bruins just need wins and points any way they can get them. They wake up on Wednesday in 10th place in the Eastern Conference in points percentage, two spots out of the playoff structure. They technically remain a point ahead of Columbus, two ahead of Ottawa (their next opponent, by the way), and three ahead of Montreal in the wild card race, but all of those teams are ahead of them by points percentage thanks to games in hand.
In the last two games, the Bruins have finally gotten back in the win column, against two tough opponents, thanks in large part to Swayman. He pretty much stole Saturday’s win over Florida. He didn’t steal Tuesday’s win, but he did make 16 big saves in the third period after the Lightning had cut the Bruins’ lead to 4-2, preventing what had been a 4-0 game from getting too close for comfort. Boston added two empty-netters late to make the game once again look like a blowout.
“It helps a lot,” Sacco said of Swayman’s recent play. “You look over the last, whatever it was, couple of years, our goaltending has been outstanding, right? We all know that. When you make mistakes, when you have breakdowns in your coverage, and he’s playing the way he does, you can breathe a little bit easier.
“You want to not give that many. You don’t want to give as many chances as we have maybe the last couple games, but certainly when he’s playing like that, it makes everybody feel a little bit more – I don’t want to say relaxed, because that’s not the right word, but a little bit more confident, I guess is the right word.”
This is the Swayman the Bruins are paying him to be, and the one they’re going to need the rest of the way if they’re going to make the playoffs and have any chance of making noise in the spring.