This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Linus Ullmark
Boston Bruins Goaltender
A .938 and a 40-6-1 record, and neither number is going to happen again.
| Season | Team | GP | W | L | OTL | GA | GAA | SO | SA | SV% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015-16 | BUF | 20 | 8 | 10 | 2 | 49 | 2.60 | 0 | 565 | .913 |
| 2016-17 | BUF | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 3.06 | 0 | 36 | .917 |
| 2017-18 | BUF | 5 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 8 | 2.00 | 0 | 123 | .935 |
| 2018-19 | BUF | 37 | 15 | 14 | 5 | 109 | 3.11 | 2 | 1146 | .905 |
| 2019-20 | BUF | 34 | 17 | 14 | 3 | 91 | 2.69 | 1 | 1066 | .915 |
| 2020-21 | BUF | 20 | 9 | 6 | 3 | 49 | 2.63 | 0 | 591 | .917 |
| 2021-22 | BOS | 41 | 26 | 10 | 2 | 95 | 2.45 | 1 | 1140 | .917 |
| 2022-23 | BOS | 49 | 40 | 6 | 1 | 91 | 1.89 | 2 | 1457 | .938 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 207 | 116 | 63 | 16 | 495 | 2.50 | 6 | 6124 | .919 |
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
49 games, 40-6-1, a .9375 save percentage and a 1.89 goals-against average, with 2 shutouts on 1,457 shots faced.
Boston’s goaltending was measured at 36.3 goals better than expected across the season — first in the league and not close. The club conceded 177 goals; the chances it gave up predicted 150.3 expected goals against at five-on-five alone.
He won the Vezina Trophy. His career save percentage across 207 games is .919, which is very good, and it is nineteen points below what he did last year.
The Physical Game
6-4 and 223 and he plays a controlled, blocking game that takes the top of the net away — square early, deep enough to be covered, and he does not need to be athletic to be in the right place.
He is square to the puck before the shooter has finished the motion, which is the whole technical description, and the rebounds are directed to the corners rather than into the slot. The puck-handling is genuinely good and he plays it more than most.
The Mental Game
He started 49 games for a club that lost twelve times in regulation all season, which is a specific and unusually gentle test, and the honest thing to say is that nothing last season examined him.
What is known from before Boston is less flattering: his numbers in Buffalo were good rather than exceptional. The Vezina season is real and it happened; the question the book has to answer is which of the two numbers describes the goaltender, and the sample says the career one.
The Intangibles
A hundred and sixty-third overall in 2012, a sixth-round pick who was 27 before he had a starter’s job, and he has now won the Vezina.
He is 30, and he shares the crease with a 24-year-old who posted a .920 behind the same defence. Boston has two goaltenders it cannot both keep and cannot easily choose between, on a club that has just lost both centres — the trade that solves one problem is sitting there, and it has been sitting there for a year.
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
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 is square to the puck before the shooter has finished the motion”
“the rebounds are directed to the corners rather than into the slot”
“The puck-handling is genuinely good and he plays it more than most.”