But Sturm didn\u2019t want to dwell on that. They could start fresh.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Swayman has rewarded that faith, turning in the best season of his career, which has continued with a stellar run in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. He has been the biggest reason for the Bruins remaining alive in a best-of-7 series in which they\u2019re down 3-2 to the Buffalo Sabres, and will try to help extend that series Friday, when the Sabres and Bruins square off at TD Garden (7:30 p.m. ET; ESPN, NESN, MSG-B, TVAS2, SN360) in a must-win Game 6 for Boston.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For those efforts, Swayman was named one of three finalists for the Vezina Trophy, voted as best goalie in the NHL, alongside Ilya Sorokin<\/a> of the New York Islanders and Andrei Vasilevskiy<\/a>\u00a0of the Tampa Bay Lightning. He went 31-18-4 this season with a 2.71 goals-against average, a .908 save percentage and two shutouts in 55 games (54 starts).<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a lifelong dream of mine,\u201d Swayman said. \u201cTo finally be in the conversation, it\u2019s an incredible honor. The goalies that have come before me and have won the Vezina, most are Hall of Famers, so it\u2019s pretty incredible to be a part of that conversation, and a ton of credit goes to this group in front of me. It\u2019s such a team award and I\u2019m just so blessed to be a part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n It marks the first time Swayman has been a finalist for the award, though he was one half of the William M. Jennings Trophy<\/a>-winning duo in 2023 with Linus Ullmark<\/a>, who won the Vezina that season. The William M. Jennings Trophy is given to the goalie or goalies who have the fewest goals scored on them in a season.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s great, it\u2019s amazing,\u201d Sturm said. \u201cJust like that, he\u2019s on top again and he showed it, especially last game again. All year long. Well deserved. Guys are really happy and he should be very proud the way he handled [it], especially after a year like that.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know how important he is for us as a team. And I also know why we\u2019re in this position, why we\u2019re still playing, and he\u2019s a big part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n This postseason, Swayman has a 2.87 GAA and .910 save percentage, though because of the Bruins\u2019 Game 4 performance in a 6-1 loss, those numbers don\u2019t entirely capture what he has meant to Boston in its first-round series.\u00a0<\/p>\n He has led on and off the ice, notably when he barked at the Bruins bench after coming off the ice in that disastrous Game 4, when Boston trailed 4-0 by the end of the first period. His fire was contagious and, more crucially, was backed up by a Game 5 in which he allowed a single power-play goal in a 2-1 overtime victory.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s the beauty about him, I would say,\u201d Sturm said. \u201cI have experienced, guys will open their mouth and show some emotions, but then there is no reaction. They go out and whatever. This guy responded big time. Big time. He\u2019s a leader. \u2026 To come like that and have a response and be the main guy again, that shows a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n It was, yet again, a moment in which Swayman has persevered, much like last season, in which he has proven he can rise above.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But Sturm didn\u2019t want to dwell on that. They could start fresh.\u00a0 Swayman has rewarded that faith, turning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":616698,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-616697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}