Boston Bruins head coach Jim Montgomery continued to be coy about his starting goalie situation after Bruins goalie Jeremy Swayman got the start in Game 1 and made 35 saves in a 5-1 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday night at TD Garden.
“I have looked that far ahead,” Montgomery replied initially in his postgame press conference late Saturday night. “I don’t know who our defensemen and who our goalies are going to be, and I’m not going to tell you.”
However, when pressed by Boston Globe reporter Tara Sullivan, the Bruins bench boss and reigning Jack Adams Award winner acknowledged it could be hard to sway (pun intended) from Swayman after Game 1.
“It’s going to be hard to go away from ‘Sway,'” Montgomery said of his 25-year-old netminder. “He played a terrific game. “But if we decide to go with Ullmark, we’re comfortable with it, and our team is comfortable with it. It doesn’t affect us in the room, whoever starts the next game.”
Jeremy Swayman had never started in Game 1 of a Stanley Cup Playoffs series, and Montgomery acknowledged that went into giving him the nod over Linus Ullmark despite the reigning Vezina Trophy winner being hot down the stretch and since he was almost traded at the March 8 NHL Trade Deadline.
“Swayman hasn’t had the opportunity to start a series before,” Montgomery explained. “We wanted to give him the opportunity to start a series and see how he’d handle it. He did really well.”
Heading into Game 1 of this series with the Leafs, the 6-foot-3, 195-pound goalie that the Bruins drafted in the fourth round (111th overall) of the 2017 NHL Entry Draft had gone 3-4-0 in seven playoff starts.
Swayman finished the 2023-24 season 25-10-8 with a 2.53 GAA and a .916 save percentage.
Linus Ullmark was 22-10-7 with a 2.57 GAA and a .915 save percentage.
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