Morning Skate: Reliable

Happy Thursday, folks.

Hope it’s a good one and the start of some smooth sailing into the weekend.

Yesterday, I was reading a piece by Travis Yost of TSN.ca, where he sorted the league’s goalie tandems into tiers.

The Bruins were put in the second tier from the top, which seems fair enough. I’d imagine if Jeremy Swayman and Linus Ullmark can grow even a little bit from last year’s performances, they’d be considered a top-tier tandem next year.

(Yost did pieces for all of the positions, and the whole series is a pretty interesting read. I’m not sure why Brad Marchand is missing from the LW piece, as he included injured guys like Charlie McAvoy in other pieces.)

Reading through the piece got me thinking: when was the last time Bruins fans truly had to worry about the team’s goaltending?

If you think about it, the Bruins have had reliable, above-average goaltending for close to 15 years at this point.

You could arguably start with 2007-2008, though Tim Thomas hadn’t quite reached his ultimate form yet.

But starting in 2008-2009, the Bruins never really had to worry about goaltending.

Things went alternated between solidly Thomas and solidly Rask for a few years, before Rask cemented his place in the crease until his retirement.

When you compare that to a team like Philadelphia, who has been struggling to find a reliable goalie for more than a decade, or even Toronto, we have been spoiled.

Anyways, that’s today’s goalie talk.

Today’s discussion topic

There’s no way of knowing this, but take a guess — who emerges as the Bruins’ 1A goalie this season?