Swayman to start Game 3 in goal for Bruins
BOSTON — Coach Bruce Cassidy will start Jeremy Swayman in goal when the Bruins engage the Carolina Hurricanes on Friday night at TD Garden.
Cassidy made the announcement during a press briefing on Thursday morning at Warrior Ice Arena in Brighton. Cassidy gave the players the day off to recuperate from Thursday night’s grinding penalty plagued 5-2 loss to the Canes at PNC Arena.
The Hurricanes are up 2-0 in the best-of-seven opening-round Stanley Cup playoff series and have outscored the Bruins 10-3 with two empty-net goals. Bruins’ goalie Linus Ullmark played great down the stretch in the regular season and was awarded top billing over Swayman in the first two games of the playoffs.
Ullmark registered a 4.17 goals against average and an .860 save percentage while facing 57 shots on goal in the two losses. Swayman’s last win was at Montreal on April 24 and he will be making his second career start in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
“Swayman will go,” said Cassidy. “Right now, I think Linus has been fine and like I said after Game 1 I think we have to do a better job at the other end.
“But if it ends up being one of those 2-1 games where we need a performance where we get that timely save and give the guys some life. That’s where we are at right now, they are scoring goals and they are not giving very many up.
“It has to do a little bit at both ends. It’s not on Linus. I’m not saying Ullmark’s the reason, he’s not. But Swayman is going to be in there and he’ll get his opportunity and we’ve talked about using them both.”
Carolina coach Rob Brind’amour was compelled to change goaltenders at 7:47 of the first period on Thursday night. Canes’ starter Antti Raanta left the ice with a mouth injury after being run by Bruins right wing
David Pastrnak. He was replaced by Pyotr Kochetkov, who finished with 30 saves.
Blue-line shuffle: Cassidy said that defenseman Mike Reilly will replace injured Hampus Lindholm but had not finalized his blue-line pairings for Game 3.
Lindholm was on the business end of a brutal collision with Carolina right wing Andrei Svechnikov along the end boards in the Boston end at 17:11 of the second. Svechnikov lined up Lindholm, made initial contact in the upper chest and caught him under the chin
The secondary hit is what caused Lindholm to appear woozy and needing assistance to exit the sheet. Despite the severity of the contact to the head, Svechnikov caught two minutes in the cooler for roughing.
“He (Lindholm) traveled back but he’s not available and we will go from there,” said Cassidy. “We have got Mike Reilly who’s a left shot and he’s played a lot of games for us so right now he is the obvious choice to go in.
“He’s played with Charlie Mcavoy and he’s played with (Brandon) Carlo so it shouldn’t be any adjustment period for him in terms of who he is playing with. The adjustment is being injected into a very intense physical playoff series and he has to be prepared for that.”