{"id":555079,"date":"2026-04-18T07:12:56","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T07:12:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/555079\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T07:12:56","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T07:12:56","slug":"swayman-improvement-noted-by-cam-neely-98-5-the-sports-hub","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/555079\/","title":{"rendered":"Swayman improvement noted by Cam Neely &#8211; 98.5 The Sports Hub"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This season was a bounce back year for Jeremy Swayman and Bruins president Cam Neely has some reasons as to why.<\/p>\n<p>During an appearance with Zolak and Bertrand, Neely pointed to Swayman&#8217;s full training camp and motivation to make the US Olympic team as catalysts for his improvement this year.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When you miss training camp as a goaltender, it&#8217;s very hard to catch up,&#8221; Neely told Zolak and Bertrand, &#8220;I mean, when you&#8217;re not getting shots from NHL players, you&#8217;re not on the ice and having those kinds of battles in front of you, it&#8217;s hard to recreate that when you&#8217;re not in NHL practices. So, I think we all knew what type of goalie he could be, and he&#8217;s shown that in the past. But this year, he came in and he wanted to make the Olympic team, he wanted to make our team better. I think he had a really good offseason, came to camp ready to go, and he performed well for us, for sure, this year.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Swayman missed last year&#8217;s training camp before signing an 8 year\/$66 million extension.<\/p>\n<p>Swayman&#8217;s .908 save percentage and 2.71 goals against average, despite improvements from last season&#8217;s .892 SV% and 3.11 GAA, likely won&#8217;t jump off the stat sheet for fans. His advanced metrics tell a different story.<\/p>\n<p>This year, Swayman&#8217;s .534 goals saved above expected per 60 minutes was first among 19 qualified goalies (min. 50 starts) <a href=\"https:\/\/moneypuck.com\/goalies.htm\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">per MoneyPuck.<\/a> <\/p>\n<p>Using those same parameters, Swayman&#8217;s -.161 goals saved above expected per 60 minutes was 21st out of 22 goalies during the 2024-25 season.<\/p>\n<p>It should be mentioned that the one goalie who trailed Jeremy Swayman in that metric last season was Buffalo Sabres&#8217; goaltender Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen.<\/p>\n<p>Goaltending seems to be one the pronounced advantage the Bruins hold over the Sabres. <\/p>\n<p>Buffalo will be without Alex Lyon to start the first round series against Boston, leaving starting goalie duties to Luukonen.<\/p>\n<p>For Buffalo, it will be their first playoff series since the 2010-11 season. For Luukkonen, it&#8217;s his first time in the playoffs.<\/p>\n<p>The Bruins will be in Buffalo taking on the Sabres in the first round of the NHL playoffs Sunday night. Game 1 pregame at 6:30 PM, puck drop at 7PM right here on 98.5 the Sports Hub.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This season was a bounce back year for Jeremy Swayman and Bruins president Cam Neely has some reasons&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555080,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5102],"tags":[530,592,62,57,5141,5,156,4,63],"class_list":{"0":"post-555079","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida-panthers","8":"tag-bruins","9":"tag-cam-neely","10":"tag-florida","11":"tag-florida-panthers","12":"tag-floridapanthers","13":"tag-hockey","14":"tag-jeremy-swayman","15":"tag-nhl","16":"tag-panthers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116424474876153754","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}