This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Jeremy Swayman
Boston Bruins Goaltender
A .920 in thirty-seven games behind the best defensive club in hockey, and no job of his own.
| Season | Team | GP | W | L | OTL | GA | GAA | SO | SA | SV% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-21 | BOS | 10 | 7 | 3 | 0 | 15 | 1.50 | 2 | 271 | .945 |
| 2021-22 | BOS | 41 | 23 | 14 | 3 | 96 | 2.41 | 3 | 1111 | .914 |
| 2022-23 | BOS | 37 | 24 | 6 | 4 | 76 | 2.27 | 4 | 953 | .920 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 88 | 54 | 23 | 7 | 187 | 2.24 | 9 | 2335 | .920 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.
Last Season
37 games, 24-6-4, a .9203 save percentage and a 2.27 goals-against average, with 4 shutouts on 953 shots faced.
Four shutouts in thirty-seven games, and a career line across 88 games of .920 — which is the same number, so unlike his partner there is no gap between the season and the career to argue about.
He faced 953 shots to Ullmark’s 1,457 behind the same defence, and conceded at a rate seventeen points worse. Both facts matter and the second is the one Boston has to weigh.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 195 and he plays a quicker, more reactive game than Ullmark — less blocking, more movement, and he will challenge further out.
He moves post to post as well as any goaltender in the organisation and he recovers to his feet fast after the first save. The puck-handling is the weak part and he is not asked to start breakouts.
The Mental Game
He has been a backup, a co-starter, and a man publicly discussed as trade bait for two seasons, and none of it has shown up in the numbers. Three seasons and 88 games without a save percentage below .914 is a very stable player.
The untested part is volume. He has never played more than 41 games in a season, and a goaltender’s record is not a description of him until somebody makes him play sixty.
The Intangibles
A hundred and eleventh overall in 2017, out of Maine, and he was the best goaltender in college hockey before he arrived.
He is 24. The situation is the story: he is cheaper, younger, and statistically indistinguishable from a Vezina winner over the length of both their careers, and Boston is paying two men to do one job on a club that needs a centre. Something gives this season or next.
What kind of player
The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.
“He moves post to post as well as any goaltender in the organisation”
“less blocking, more movement, and he will challenge further out”
“The puck-handling is the weak part and he is not asked to start breakouts.”