There were many different Bruins players that stepped up to meet the moment in Tuesday night’s win over the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Andrew Peeke and Parker Wotherspoon both scored goals with Charlie McAvoy out of commission with an injury, and Matt Poitras created the B’s first goal amidst a fast start with an aggressive, playmaking rush up the ice. Trent Frederic stepped up and hammered Emil Lilleberg in a fight that the Bruins were clamoring for after Mark Kastelic was knocked out of the lineup with a dirty crosscheck to the head at the end of last week’s road game in Tampa Bay.
Trent Frederic gets Emil Lilleberg to answer for his nasty crosscheck to Mark Kastelic last week in Tampa, and lands a lot of punches. Good tilt pic.twitter.com/FusyG4vggC
— Joe Haggerty (@HackswithHaggs) January 15, 2025
Even 25-year-old Franklin, Mass. native Michael Callahan did a solid job in his NHL debut that he will undoubtedly remember for the rest of his life.
But one player who’s clearly elevated his game as of late and was nearly bulletproof in Tuesday’s 6-2 win over the Bolts was heralded goalie Jeremy Swayman as his game has begun rising to last season’s lofty heights. Swayman matched his career-high with 43 saves and made 16 saves in the third period while holding back a Tampa Bay attack that had the B’s scrambling and icing pucks for much of the final 20 minutes of play.
Swayman even got a little feisty as the Bruins very clearly didn’t appreciate Lilleberg smoking Kastelic with a cross-check to the head that has landed him on injured reserve with an upper body injury.
Jeremy Swayman is always looking for a fight pic.twitter.com/XkCD1a0sOx
— Evan Marinofsky (@EvanMarinofsky) January 15, 2025
"The way they handled the game when we were in [Tampa Bay] was unacceptable and our guys stepped up and made a statement tonight,” said Swayman. “That’s a good feeling as a group coming together and getting a job done the right way, and the respectful way. Something we can build on.”
It was a masterful performance in a must-win game for the Bruins as they leave themselves very little room for error at this point in the second half of the season.
The 2-4-0 record in January might not be something to write home about for the B’s top netminder while the B’s struggled through a six-game losing streak, but the 2.84 goals against average and .919 save percentage this month show a goalie playing his best hockey of the season. Since the Christmas break Swayman has more starts (eight) than any other NHL goalie and is sporting a sparkling .925 save percentage that can cover up a lot of defensive mistakes happening in front of him.
Clearly, it’s much better than the .898 save percentage Swayman is still sporting for the season, and Swayman’s play has been a major part of the last two big-time divisional wins over Florida and Tampa Bay that are keeping the B’s afloat amidst the Stanley Cup playoff discussion.
The Swayman impact when his puck-stopping game is at its highest level is palpable with the rest of the group.
“It helps a lot. You look over the last couple of years and our goaltending has been outstanding and we all know that,” said Joe Sacco. “When you make mistakes and you have breakdowns in your coverage, when [Swayman] is playing the way that he is you can breathe a little easier. You don’t want to give many chances like we have in the last couple of games, but when he’s playing the way, he’s been playing it fills everybody with a little more confidence.
“We still have to build on our game here. We’ve won two big games against divisional opponents, but there are still things for us to work on and improve upon within our game to help [Swayman] out too.”
Clearly Swayman himself is feeling it after he admittedly was struggling to get into midseason form in the first weeks and months of the season when his contract holdout adversely him individually, and the hockey team as a whole. Instead, he’s back into the mindset of taking things shot-by-shot, shift-by-shift, period-by-period and game-by-game while the team around him is more focused on cleaning up the defensive zone.
“I’ve still got a lot of growth to do and it’s just one game at a time,” said Swayman. “My job is to maintain that one-shot-at-a-time mentality and to keep working on it in practice, and to build good habits. That’s what I have experienced this year, and it has really helped me a lot.
“Guys are getting rewarded for the work they are putting in and being in the right spot at the right time, and anyone can make a difference in a game. Everybody out on the ice has a job to get done.”
There’s still a long way to go, obviously, for a Bruins team that sits tied for 22nd in the NHL with a team .896 save percentage this season.
Tuesday night’s win was a different-type game against Tampa Bay where the pressure was heavy and the Bruins didn’t block as many shots as they did against Florida (29 blocked shots vs. the Panthers and 14 blocks against the Lightning), but the common denominator was that Swayman stopped just about everything. This is the exact reason why the Bruins, for all of their flaws and imperfections, have a chance to make noise and surprise in the postseason while holding a two-point cushion for a wild-card playoff spot.
With a strong second half and any residual rustiness long gone at this point, it is about time for Swayman to live up to the $8 million salary that he went through the fire for to get just prior to this season. He is now starting to do that after being less than his best in the first few months and that can go a long way toward changing the dynamic for a Bruins team that, let’s face it, isn’t going to be a goal-scoring juggernaut this season no matter what they do at the NHL trade deadline.
It's long been up to Swayman to rise up to the challenge if the Bruins are going to be as good as they can be this season, and he’s now consistently doing that for the first time this season. That’s an equalizer for a Black and Gold group that’s come to rely on elite goaltending as part of their formula for success each year.