A year after finishing at the bottom of their division for the first time in modern memory, the Boston Bruins need a lot of things to go right for them to have even the faintest hope of challenging for a Stanley Cup playoff berth.
If one thing in particular doesn’t improve for them – the performance of starting goalie Jeremy Swayman – the Bruins are destined to wind up in the Atlantic Division basement for the second straight year.
Just about everything that could’ve gone wrong for Swayman did go wrong last season. The 26-year-old missed Boston’s training camp due to a financial stalemate. Although he did get a new contract done in time to start the Bruins’ second game of the season, he never got into a groove and finished with what were by far his worst individual numbers of his five-year NHL career, including a 3.11 goals-against average and .892 save percentage in a career-high 58 appearances.
Granted, some of the blame for Swayman’s bloated numbers must be attributed to Boston’s porous defensive game when Charlie McAvoy and Hampus Lindholm were injured. But when Swayman asked for and received a pay raise to $8.25 million per season, he invited the criticism of him that had harangued him all season long.
Now, he must help the Bruins exceed expectations in 2025-26.
“We have an endless belief mindset, and that’s gotta be set from Day 1,” Swayman told reporters last Thursday. “We can’t go in the future, we can’t predict what’s gonna happen, but the thing is that we can control what we can control, right here, right now.”
With Bruins backup goalie Joonas Korpisalo being no serious threat to take playing opportunities away from him, Swayman didn’t have the competition pushing him to elevate his own performance.
Boston Bruins Netminder Jeremy Swayman Ready For Rebound Season
Last season was a tough year for the Boston Bruins, and perhaps nobody took that harder than Jeremy Swayman.
Now, he has some competition for another coveted goalie spot.
Not only does Swayman face intense pressure to backstop the Bruins into playoff contention, but he also must try to secure playing time on Team USA at the 2026 Winter Olympics.
The Americans have plenty of options in net, including Winnipeg Jets superstar Connor Hellebuyck and Dallas Stars counterpart Jake Oettinger. The three of them were on the 4 Nations Face-Off squad, but only Hellebuyck and Oettinger played.
“That’s always the hardest problem with being a goalie,” Hellebuyck told NHL.com at the United States’ Olympic orientation camp. “There are multiple guys but only one net.”
So while Swayman can’t lock up the starter’s job for the U.S. with strong play out of the gate, he can definitely push himself down the pecking order if he struggles early on. Other Olympic hopefuls, such as Joey Daccord and Thatcher Demko, could even push Swayman off the team.
“I have to compete all out in order to get the best out of them,” Swayman told NHL.com. “And that’s the best part, because we are on the same team. We know that one goalie plays at the end of the day, but they’d be (angry) at me if I was taking shifts off, or if I was taking a practice off, and I’d be the same with them.
“And 100 percent we all want to play, we all want to be in that net come gametime in Milan, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do. And that mindset is going to really elevate us.”
In sum, it’s shaping up to be a boom-or-bust season for Swayman this coming year. He’s going to be the last line of defense for a B’s team that is in a transition of sorts, and that’s a recipe for potential disaster. So is the fact that Swayman’s contract doesn’t have no-trade protection until next season, forcing Boston GM Don Sweeney to make a long-term judgment on Swayman far sooner than anyone may have anticipated when he signed his current deal a year ago.
Of course, every starting NHL goalie is dealing with some degree of pressure and ups and downs. That comes with the territory. But Swayman is facing significantly more pressure than most of his colleagues. How he handles it could prove there’s nothing to worry about, or it could be the calm before the storm.
Swayman has got to step up and justify the Bruins’ investment in him. Because if he doesn’t, it will be an extremely long season for him.
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