Great moments are born from great opportunity, and rookie Jeremy Swayman might have earned himself some more of both.
As the Boston Bruins have gone through it with injuries and COVID-19 impacting the availability of their typical goalie tandem of Tuukka Rask and Jaroslav Halak, it was Swayman who stepped up between the pipes.
Now, as the Bruins look towards the Stanley Cup Playoffs, it looks like they’ve seen enough from Swayman to name him the backup over Halak entering the postseason.
“Yeah, he will be, I think he’s earned that,” Cassidy said when asked if Swayman will be the next man up behind Rask.
“Obviously a tough call with Jaro with his experience. He’s just played more down the stretch here, and some of that was out of circumstance, Tuukka got hurt, Jaro went into COVID. So there’s a quarantine and then the goalie is a little tougher to get thrown back in there, so a little time to get back up to speed, and thought Swayman grabbed the ball and ran with it. That’s the decision there, but that could change as we go along, obviously as Jaro gets more reps, but right now I think Swayman has done everything we’ve asked.”
Despite the 2-1 loss to the Washington Capitals on Tuesday, Swayman had 30 stops in net as the last line of defense on a team comprised mostly of AHL players, by nature of it being the last regular season game. Swayman now has a 7-3 record between the pipes, locked in since his first showing.
The Bruins begin the first round of the playoffs against the Capitals on Saturday with puck drop at 7:15 p.m. ET.
