Ryan: Folks, it’s far too early to already brew up a Bruins goalie controversy

The 2021-22 NHL season is just eight days old — but 31 NHL clubs sure have managed to cram a whole lot into a week of game action.

Let’s see, where to begin…

We’ve had a bevy of wild 3-on-3 overtime finishes, including this beautiful product that played out between the Maple Leafs and Rangers on Tuesday. 

The Sabres are 3-0-0. The Habs — coming off a miracle run to the Stanley Cup Final — are 0-4-0. 

The Blackhawks look like a dumpster fire, despite their *bold* offseason efforts of fast-forwarding through a rebuild. 

We’ve had highlight-reel tallies. A falsified COVID-19 vaccine card. And multiple scraps that have featured a headbutt, a clothesline and a Superman punch.

The higher-ups at both ESPN and Turner Sports have to be doing cartwheels, because you really couldn’t have asked for a better start to this year — at least for 31 of 32 NHL franchises. 

And … then you have the Bruins. 

Entering Wednesday night, there will be 10 teams that have already played at least four games this season. The Seattle Kraken already have five games under their belt.

The Bruins, meanwhile, have played once. Uno. 1 time. 

No other club holds such an unfavorable distinction in terms of inactivity — with Bruce Cassidy and the B’s spending most of the last week-plus twiddling their thumbs and biding their time in practice.  

Even though B’s fans got a taste of regular-season action during Saturday’s season opener, Boston found itself in another state of limbo shortly thereafter — off until Wednesday’s road tilt against the Flyers.

As a result, while other teams have had rookies impress, leads collapse and numerous other developments play out over multiple games to start this season, the Bruins haven’t exactly had all that much to comb over.

There were no injuries to report following Saturday’s win against the Stars — nor are any lineup tweaks on the horizon. Boston has plenty of moving pieces on its roster, but all received passing grades from the coaching staff following their debut.  

Try as we might, there really … isn’t all that much to delve into with this B’s team that we don’t already know following three-plus weeks of training camp — and we can’t evaluate them further until we see more tangible regular-season reps.

Perhaps this extended stretch of inactivity and lack of tangible drama is why a purported goalie competition is the lone source of discourse at this early stage of the 2021-22 campaign.  

Such a discussion ramped up when Linus Ullmark labored at times during his preseason reps, while Jeremy Swayman sure looked like the same guy that was dominant in net during last season’s small sample size.

It seemed to reach a boiling point when the rookie in Swayman leapfrogged Ullmark and secured Saturday’s season-opening start. 

And now, with Swayman set to start a second-straight game on Wednesday night in Philadelphia, things might be getting out of control. 

From Bruce Cassidy’s perspective, the plan all along was to give both of his goalies an equal allocation of reps through the first few weeks before more significant workload adjustments are made. In Ullmark’s case, the optics of a guy who inked a $20 million contract in August sitting out the first two games might rankle some fans, but the B’s aren’t hitting the panic button off of a few poor preseason outings.

“Better — a little less active,” Cassidy said of Ullmark’s game over the last week of practice. “Probably more similar to how he plays. Top of the crease. You're seeing a lot of good pucks in practice, so sometimes it can get tough on goalies — he's seen a lot of power plays, he's down there for Bergy's group and they can rip it. 

“But he looks like he's battling there — he's in a good place in the locker room, etc. I'm sure he wants the net, disappointed he didn't get the start, but as we said to them — it's a competition. So when you get your chance, do what you need to do to stay in the net so we don't take you out and that's kind of the message to both of them.”

As much as it pains those ready and willing to paint a player’s performance with a broad brush or size up an entire season based off of a few periods of preseason hockey, the fact of the matter is that sorting out Boston’s situation in net is going to be a roster deliberation that is going to take far longer to settle than just the first few weeks of October.

It remains to be seen if Ullmark is indeed the same player that served as a stingy last line of defense in front of a porous Buffalo defense, but he’s certainly far more effective than what we’ve seen of him so far in a B’s sweater. 

"I think we're so blessed with two great goalies and I think Linus is obviously a huge part of that and it's an adjustment, especially at that position,” Nick Foligno said. “I've seen a lot of goalies come in, in my days of playing, and it's a lot — they're adjusting to not only a new team, but a new lifestyle, family. And then you're also in such a high-pressure position. So I don't think this time of him getting to know us —  I mean, I'm even benefiting from this little time. 

"I'm sure it's annoying, absolutely, but it's nice to be able to have this practice time where I get to really know guys and you just feel a little bit more comfortable in the game. So you can go one of two ways — you can be annoyed by it or you can embrace it. I think he's done a good job of embracing it and knowing that he’s gonna get his starts, he's going to be a big part of this and we're gonna do whatever we can, obviously as teammates, to bring him along. But he's played long enough and I think he's confident in his abilities enough to know that when he gets in there, we're gonna be playing great in front of him and he's going to do a great job for us and we're excited to see him get in there, for sure.”

Perhaps Swayman puts together another strong performance against Philly on Wednesday and ramps up the pressure on Ullmark even more. In fact, I’d be more surprised if the rookie didn’t, given his body of work so far in the pros. 

Maybe down the road, we can have the discussion about whether a 1A/1B tandem was the proper move if Swayman continues to look like a franchise netminder — even though there are still 20 other teams that have allocated more of their cap to the netminder position than the B’s and their $5.925 combined hit between Ullmark and Swayman. 

But until we get to evaluate an extended set of reps for both goalies, it’s unfair to all parties to declare a victory in what should ultimately be a partnership in net, rather than a pugnacious battle between two teammates.