Boston Bruins
“A kid from Alaska never thought in a million years he’d get his name chanted by 20,000.”
It was deja vu all over again for Jeremy Swayman and the Bruins on Tuesday night.
For the second game in a row, Boston was holding on for dear life against a furious Sabres surge in the waning minutes of the third period.
Just 48 hours after Buffalo flipped a two-goal deficit into an eventual 4-3 win with just under eight minutes to play, the Sabres carved into what was a four-goal Boston lead in Game 2 of this first-round series.
In the span of just 1:14, Bowen Byram and Peyton Krebs both found the back of the net — breathing new life into an emptying KeyBank Center with less than five minutes to go.
As soon as Krebs tucked a ricocheting puck past Jeremy Swayman to turn a presumed blowout into yet another nail-biter, Boston’s goalie had seemingly had enough.
As Buffalo’s goal horn blared, Swayman rose from his crouched perch between the pipes, looked over to Boston’s bench, and signaled for a timeout.
Boston was in desperate need of a breather. Marco Sturm obliged.
And on a night where Swayman turned aside 34 Sabres shots, that timeout call might have been the top stop en route to a 4-2 win for Boston.
“I think it was a little bit of a momentum shift,” Swayman said after Boston’s Game 2 victory. “But I knew we weren’t going to have a TV timeout after the goal, so it was just important to get everyone to take a breath.
“We know that we have a standard to play at, and I thought the momentum did shift a little bit, and a ton of kudos to my group for responding extremely well.”
Sturm, who signaled the timeout from Boston’s bench, said the added break was needed for his skaters to steady themselves as Buffalo’s partially-empty barn roared with approval over the shot at another late-game rally.
“Just to calm everything down,” Sturm said of calling the timeout. “We’ve been through it. Just to regroup again, make sure guys — it’s about the team, it’s about the win, not about anything else. I know that the crowd — you guys know it, too — they’re pretty good. They’re behind them. They’re pushing in. They feel it.”
The brief respite was all that the Bruins needed to regroup — as Boston thwarted several late O-zone pushes from Buffalo to knot the best-of-seven series up at 1-1.
Through two games of a physical bout between Atlantic Division foes, the play of Swayman between the pipes has been one of the few constants for Sturm’s club.
After a sterling 2024 playoff run where he sported a .933 save percentage and 13.3 goals saved above expected rate across 12 games, Swayman has stopped 68 of the first 72 shots that have come his way from Buffalo — equating to a .932 save percentage.
“It’s calmness,” defenseman Nikita Zadorov said of what he’s seen from Swayman. “It’s super important to see from the goalies. His confidence is great. Like I said, I don’t want to give a lot of compliments to goalies, I don’t like to jinx it, but he’s been awesome.”
With Swayman holding down the fort for Boston, the Bruins ramped up their physicality, forechecking pressure, and assertiveness down the other end of the ice in Game 2.
Even with a gift-wrapped goal off a seemingly harmless neutral-zone dump-in from Morgan Geekie, the Bruins landed their punches against Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen — with Viktor Arvidsson lighting the lamp twice and Pavel Zacha adding in a power-play tally.
That gave Swayman enough breathing room to lock things down, finishing the game with eight saves off of nine high-danger scoring chances generated by Buffalo.
A resurgent performance from Boston’s Mittelstadt-Zacha-Arvidsson line was needed on Tuesday, while the Bruins’ PK — a perfect 9-for-9 in this series against a flatlining Buffalo power play — has drawn the ire of Sabres fans.
But if the Bruins want to push their season beyond the next week, they’re going to need Swayman to be the equalizer against a talented and hungry Buffalo roster.
After two straight games of being serenaded by “SWAY-MAN” chants in Buffalo, Boston’s 27-year-old goalie is looking forward to a different type of reception on Causeway Street for Games 3 and 4.
“That’s part of the game. It’s my job to stay focused and enjoy it. A kid from Alaska never thought in a million years he’d get his name chanted by 20,000. So it’s a pretty incredible feeling,” Swayman said of getting jeered by Buffalo fans. “Understood that you have to earn it. You’re only as good as your last game – so that’s a big motivator moving forward.”
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