Nobody can change the past, but learning from it is always an option. That’s exactly what Jeremy Swayman is doing as he heads into his second season as the Bruins’ full-time starting goaltender.
Set to turn 27 years old early in the 2025-26 season, Swayman is entering the prime of his career. While he showed flashes early, he stumbled out of the gate once handed the keys to the crease as the team’s No. 1 goalie. The team committed to him in a big way when they traded away Linus Ullmark to the Ottawa Senators, making it clear Swayman was their guy.
A lengthy, public contract dispute only made things worse. Swayman missed valuable camp and preseason reps, and he never seemed to fully recover from the fallout. To be fair, the Bruins were a mess in other areas, too. From injuries to defensive breakdowns, unsettled line combinations and scoring issues, many factors played a role. Outside of another David Pastrnak masterclass, little went right. Swayman wasn’t the whole problem, but he carried a fair share of the blame.
Swayman Ready to Prove Bruins Right
This year offers a reset. With a full camp and preseason, Swayman can finally start on equal footing. The Bruins may be in transition, but they still expect to contend. They’ll also lean heavily on their $66 million goaltender to steal games for them and be a symbolic and, at times, literal brick wall in the crease.
“It’s an extremely important time of the year,” Swayman said of training camp after missing camp last season. “If I didn’t have that experience, I probably wouldn’t understand the importance of it. So yeah, this definitely allowed me to prepare a little bit differently come training camp time.”
So, why should things be different for Swayman this time around? Well, for starters, the Bruins’ netminder has made it clear that he feels like he’s learned a lot from how things have gone throughout his career, including the events of last offseason.
“I’m a completely different human being,” Swayman told the media following the Bruins’ Captains’ Skate. “And that’s a testament to the experience that I gained throughout my career to this point. And I’m so grateful for that, the ups and downs of it all.”
For Swayman, it’s about setting a standard for himself, but also for the locker room as a whole. He mentioned that some of the best goalies in the history of the sport were silent leaders who operated as a backbone for their teams; for Swayman, being available as a voice for his teammates to lean on is something he’s looking forward to this season and beyond.
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Though the Bruins didn’t have a successful season, Swayman was able to find his game when playing for the United States at the 2025 IIHF Men’s World Championships, a tournament that saw Swayman go 7-0 with a 1.69 goals-against average and a .921 save percentage. Describing the experience as playoff hockey, Swayman clearly took pride in getting a chance to represent his country, shutting out Switzerland to clinch the gold medal.
“It’s an honor playing for the USA every time I get the opportunity to, but to finally do it, to win a gold medal, it’s unbelievable,” he said. “That tournament for me personally was a great cap to a year that I wanted better from. To just let it all go and just play my game again, I found a lot.”
For the Bruins, Swayman’s contributions between the pipes will ultimately make or break them for the foreseeable future. The team didn’t accidentally commit to him for the long-term and they certainly aren’t going to regret their decision just one year into his new deal. Swayman has the chance to be a special goalie in the NHL; the past may be the past, but Swayman has chosen to learn from it rather than dwell on it.
