Bruins

Jim Montgomery has no ‘second guesses’ over starting Linus Ullmark in Game 2

"He was terrific. He made multiple big-time saves and it's a strength of our team."

By Conor Ryan

April 22, 2024

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The Bruins kept their goalie rotation in place on Monday night against Toronto — opting to roll with Linus Ullmark in net for Game 2 of their first-round bout at TD Garden.

Montgomery’s decision to swap out Jeremy Swayman in place of his teammate falls in line with Boston’s season-long plan. With Ullmark getting the nod, Boston has alternated goalies for the past 27 games.

But Montgomery’s lineup reshuffle didn’t result in a commanding 2-0 series lead for Boston — with the Maple Leafs skating off the Garden ice with a 3-2 victory and a deadlocked 1-1 series.

Wins and losses trump any other statistics at this team of the year. But speaking after the loss, Montgomery said that he had few qualms with turning to Ullmark on Monday night.

“No second guesses,” Montgomery said. “He was terrific. He made multiple big-time saves and it’s a strength of our team. Both of them played really well. We only scored two goals.”

Even with Ullmark relinquishing three goals on 33 total shots from Toronto, the reigning Vezina Trophy winner was far from the reason why Boston now heads to Scotiabank Arena in a tied-up series.

Boston was plagued by a lack of urgency in front of Ullmark for most of the evening, be it defensemen laboring during breakout sequences or forwards unable to generate quality looks against Ilya Samsonov (27 of 29 saves).

During 5-on-5 play, the Maple Leafs held a commanding 27-12 edge in scoring chances — including a 10-7 edge in high-danger chances.

Auston Matthews’ breakout tally against Ullmark gave the Leafs the lead for good with 7:54 to go in the third, but the visitors could have held a multi-goal lead in the final period of play had it not been for Ullmark denying Grade-A chances to skaters like Calle Jarnkrok earlier in the game.

“There’s some good and bad things,” Ullmark said of his play. “Obviously there’s some things that I gotta clean up as well. I have to look at it, as I always say — always gotta look at it afterwards, see where the errors are. Look at some tendencies, maybe there’s things that were really good and kind of build off of that.”

Ullmark, who said he found out on Sunday that he was getting the nod for Game 2, acknowledged that his starting role is far from guaranteed. If the Bruins opt to roll with Swayman (35 saves in a Game 1 win) on Wednesday, the decision will loom over Montgomery once again moving forward — regardless of the result in Game 3.

For now, Ullmark and the Bruins are looking to stay in the moment.

“There are some things to clean up, definitely. But it’s a long series,” Ullmark said. “Now it’s all about recharging. The sun will come up tomorrow as well. We go to Toronto, and then duke it out once again.”