There are two main factors — one in his control and one not — leading to Boston Bruins goalie Linus Ullmark getting the lion’s share of time between the pipes this season.
The injury to Jeremy Swayman, who returned for Thursday’s 4-1 win over the Philadelphia Flyers at TD Garden but did not play, made it easy for first-year coach Jim Montgomery to keep going with Ullmark. Then, there’s Ullmark’s outstanding play that’s keeping him on the ice.
It has amounted to a heavy workload to begin the season for the 29-year-old, as he has started 13 of 17 games, including a stretch of making six consecutive starts. Ullmark never started more than four games in a row last season as he split goaltending duties evenly with Swayman.
Even though the Bruins have leaned on him, Ullmark has responded with stellar performances and he feels like he’s holding up well physically, too, thanks to his offseason conditioning program and some motivation.
“I feel great,” Ullmark told reporters after the Bruins went to 10-0-0 on their home ice, as seen on NESN postgame coverage. “It’s why we work out in the summer. We had a little longer summer after we got beaten there in the first round. So, there was a lot of emotions that you wanted to get right back at it. And you had that little carrot in front of you all the time. I owe a lot to the guys I work with in the summer as well.”
Ullmark has looked like a different goalie than the one that didn’t perform well in Boston’s first-round playoff series with the Carolina Hurricanes last season. He stopped 22 shots against the Flyers to improve his record to an incredible 12-1-0 and has also posted a pristine 1.89 goals against average as well as a .937 save percentage — both top marks in the league — to be one of the best goalies in all of hockey.
Ullmark feels like he has found a rhythm on the ice that has led to his success.
“Obviously there’s a flow to it,” Ullmark said. “Playing a lot of games now lately, you go a lot more on auto-pilot than if you are sitting on the sideline for a long time. But also it’s been fun watching the guys play as well. Feel like they’re doing all the right things.
“Obviously, there’s going to be moments where there’s some breakdowns. There’s always going to be that (even for) teams who are good in this league, or great even. And there’s great players and there’s going to be opportunities for them to score as well. My job is to stop the puck and it’s been working fairly well.”
It will be interesting to see if Montgomery chooses to go back to Ullmark with Swayman now healthy on Saturday with the Bruins hosting the Chicago Blackhawks at 7 p.m. ET, which can be seen on NESN.
The Blackhawks score the least amount of goals per game in the NHL, so it could be a nice landing spot for Swayman to make his return and give Ullmark a break.
