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Swayman Earns Opening Night Nod For Boston Bruins

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BRIGHTON, Mass – The suspense is over and Boston Bruins rookie Jeremy Swayman will get the opening night start for the Black and Gold.

Boston Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy revealed that it will be Swayman manning the pipes against the Dallas Stars on Saturday night at TD Garden after an outstanding training camp performance. Swayman looked every bit as good in the preseason as he did last year during a 10-game audition where he posted a .945 save percentage, but many thought the veteran Linus Ullmark would get the starting nod based on the big $20 million contract he signed in the offseason.

But Ullmark struggled in camp and didn’t look quite ready to go coming off a lower body injury that ended last season for him. That has opened the door for Swayman to get the call on opening night, but Cassidy said to expect both goalies to get plenty of work in the early going as they try to keep it somewhat close to a 50/50 split of the workload.

“We met with the goalies this morning and mapped out where we were with that and our thought process. Linus understood. We need both goaltenders and it’s one day at a time and we’ll go from there,” said Cassidy. “We obviously knew what he was capable of from last year, but it’s a new year and you sort of wonder ‘How did he spend his summer?’ Does he have the attitude that he’s arrived now or is it ‘Hey, I’m fighting for the net every night and I want to be good at practice.’

“It was obviously the latter. He’s a great kid that way. So for us I didn’t think it would be a big concern, but he’s a young kid and you just don’t know how it’s going to shake out. But he was here early in camp, working on his game and getting ready for the season. He played very well in the preseason and hopefully that carries over [against Dallas].”

Clearly the Boston Bruins fan base agreed as well as a whopping 86 percent of voters in a twitter poll, with over 2,500 voters, thought that Swayman should be the opening night guy.

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