32 Teams, 32 Players: Jeremy Swayman

We continue to get closer to the start of the 2024-25 NHL season by looking at Boston Bruins goalie Jeremy Swayman.

We are inching our way toward the start of the 2024-25 NHL season, and as we get closer we are going to highlight one player on each team that stands out for the season. What kind of player? Well, a player that could make a difference, be an X-factor, be on the verge of a breakout, or just simply be a player under the microscope and needing to have a big season.

Basically — which player do I think is the most fascinating on each team.

We are not going in any particularly order and continue today with Jeremy Swayman of the Boston Bruins.

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Goaltending has been the foundation of the Boston Bruins success the past two seasons.

It is not that the rest of the team has been bad (because it hasn’t!), but it probably has not been quite as good as the record would have you believe.

That was especially true during the 2023-24 season when the Bruins won 47 games and recorded 109 points in the standings.

The goaltending got them there.

They have had the luxury of having two No. 1 goalies in Linus Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman, allowing them to split the workload with a 50/50 rate and guaranteeing that on every single night, for every single game, they had a bonafide starter in the crease.

Few other teams in the league have had that, and certainly not to the degree the Bruins have.

It not only gave them a chance to win every night, it also kept each goalie fresh and ensured that neither would get physically burnt out as the season progressed.

This was especially important during the 2023-24 season as the Bruins dealt with the retirements of Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci, while also having a defense that took a big step backwards from what we are used to seeing from a Bruins team.

The Ullmark-Swayman duo spent three years together in Boston and no team received better goaltending during their run together.

Between 2021-22 and 2023-24 the Bruins .929 save percentage was tops in the NHL, as was their .916 all situations save percentage.

If you drill it down to individual seasons, they were in the top-five in both 5-on-5 and all situations save percentages in each of the past two seasons, and ranked ninth and 14th respectively in 2021-22.

They were consistently great.

But this offseason half of that duo was traded when the Bruins sent Ullmark to the Ottawa Senators in a salary-cap clearing move. That leaves Swayman (whenever he signs his new contract as a restricted free agent) as the clear No. 1 goalie.

It is now his net, and all of the focus is going to be on him.

Let’s talk about it.