The Bruins didn’t want to go into this season with a Jeremy Swayman-Dan Vladar goaltending tandem. That’s why, on the first day of free agency this summer, they traded Vladar to the Calgary Flames for a third-round pick and went out and signed free agent Linus Ullmark to a four-year, $20 million deal.
The thinking was understandable, even if you didn’t agree with the plan. Swayman and Vladar were both young and fairly unproven at the NHL level. If one or both turned out to not really be ready, the Bruins would have been in trouble, especially with no guarantee that Tuukka Rask was going to return.
So they went out and got the 28-year-old Ullmark, who had more of an NHL track record and, at least in theory, provided more certainty in a partnership with Swayman than Vladar would have. Vladar would have needed to go through waivers to be sent down to Providence and almost certainly wouldn’t have cleared. So if he wasn't in Boston's NHL plans, trading him made sense, and a third-round pick was a pretty solid return.
On Sunday night, though, the Bruins got an uncomfortable reminder that perhaps taking a chance on the Swayman-Vladar tandem would have been the better move after all.
Vladar stopped all 27 shots he faced in Calgary’s 4-0 win over his former team at TD Garden. He wasn’t tested a ton, but he made the saves he needed to make and didn’t look shaky at all.
In fact, Vladar has looked good throughout the first month and a half of this season while backing up Flames starter Jacob Markstrom. The 24-year-old is now 4-0-1 with a .945 save percentage and two shutouts.
By comparison, Ullmark is 4-3-0 with a .908 save percentage. The analytics back up the surface-level numbers in showing that Vladar has been better so far. Among goalies who have played at least four games, Ullmark ranks dead last (57th) in high-danger save percentage (.692), 43rd in 5-on-5 save percentage (.908) and 52nd in goals saved above expected (-5.04). Vladar ranks fourth (.905), fourth (.954) and 16th (+3.83) in those three categories, respectively.
It was Swayman, not Ullmark, who was in net for Sunday night’s loss. Swayman wasn’t great, struggling with rebound control on two goals, but this either/or really comes down to Vladar vs. Ullmark. Swayman was never going anywhere, except maybe Providence if the Bruins didn’t think he was ready.
Plus, this isn’t just about who’s playing better. It’s also about finances. Vladar is making just $750,000 this season. Had the Bruins stuck with him instead of signing Ullmark, they would have had another $4.25 million to spend this offseason.
That could have meant upgrading one of the third- or fourth-liners they signed to a true second-line scorer, or an improvement over Mike Reilly or Derek Forbort on the back end. And Tuukka Rask could still be there as a security blanket if one of Swayman or Vladar faltered over the next month.
Hindsight is 20/20, and I will note in the sake of fairness that I didn’t mind the Bruins’ approach to the goalie position this offseason at the time, even if the price for Ullmark seemed a bit high. There’s also no guarantee that Vladar would be playing as well in Boston as he is in Calgary.
Don Sweeney and company chose what seemed like the safer option at the time, but nearly a month and a half into the season, it looks like fortune may have favored the bold in this case.
The Bruins’ roster could have used more meaningful upgrades. Rolling with Vladar instead of signing Ullmark could have freed up the money for them, and it looks like it could have given the Bruins better goaltending to boot.
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