Jack Quinlivan is one of many people who knew what the Maine Black Bears had in Jeremy Swayman from the day they stepped on campus together.
Swayman’s journey isn’t typical of one that brings a Division 1 hockey player here to New England, but the region has become a second home for the junior goaltender who hails from Anchorage, Alaska. The ride took many twists and turns before he became the Boston Bruins’ fourth-round draft choice and landed at Maine in 2017.
Following just one season of juniors with the United States Hockey League’s Sioux Falls Stampede, Swayman arrived at
Alfond Arena a few months after being drafted by the Black and Gold. He instantly stood out to all those around him.
“Coming in as a freshman, he was definitely ahead of a lot of us in terms of development and ability for his position,” said Quinlivan, a Shrewsbury, Mass., native who is Swayman’s junior classmate and one of Maine’s assistant captains this season. “He was an elite goalie right away from the first week of practice, and I think our whole team knew it.”
Since then, Swayman has been a steady presence and the ultimate backbone for seventh-year head coach Red Gendron’s Black Bears. The 6-foot-2, 183-pound stopper assumed the starting role in 30 of Maine’s 38 games his freshman year and never looked back. Swayman earned 14 of Maine’s 15 wins and compiled a .919 save percentage last season, earning All-Hockey East third-team honors to help the Black Bears finish sixth in the league standings for the second consecutive season.
Making a difference right away can be hard for a college freshman, especially between the pipes, but that is exactly what Swayman did the year before last. And it was all part of the plan.
“I knew I wanted to come in and make an impact on the team. Whether that’s being a team guy or stopping pucks, it was something I’ve always done and wanted to do. I just wanted to win games for Maine,” said Swayman. “I wanted to learn from the older guys, no matter what position. That’s exactly what happened because everyone really took me under their wing. I bought in right away and things really clicked for me here.”
Swayman enters his third season in the Maine goal with great anticipation after last year’s club finished 15-17-4 overall and fell short in a pair of one-goal Hockey East playoff decisions to eventual champion Northeastern at Boston’s Matthews Arena.
Though this goalie’s hockey dreams were spurred a long, long way — more than 4,400 miles away — from his current home in Orono, the college game always was a part of them. Some of his earliest memories of the sport involved watching his hometown team, the University of Alaska Anchorage, compete in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association.
He spent more than a handful of childhood years as a “stick boy,” standing in the tunnels to greet the Seawolves before they took the ice against the likes of Minnesota, North Dakota and even Boston University and his own Black Bears. It’s also where goaltending became “his” position on the ice.
“I was always around the locker room just seeing how those guys prepared,” Swayman remembered. “I didn’t really understand the grind they all went through, but I just knew that being the hometown kid I wanted to play college hockey. At that time, it was for UAA.
“My dad (Ken, who was then UAA’s volunteer foot doctor) brought me to games before I could even walk, and the seats he got were literally right behind the goal. We like to joke that it’s his fault I became a goalie. I couldn’t see anything else but the goalie, so I’d literally sit there and stare at the goalie … and the next thing I knew I got a set of pads and fell in love with it.”
Gendron and Maine associate head coach Ben Guite, perhaps, have Swayman’s hometown school to thank for the standout goaltender they recruited all these years later, but his talents have been showcased throughout his journey to college.
Of course, the Division 1 recruiting life is difficult for Alaskan prospects because the majority of scouts don’t make the trip to the northwesternmost corner of North America.
“I had been told my whole life that every time an Alaska kid travels they want to make the most of it,” Swayman said. “It was going to be when you traveled to tournaments in California or Chicago that you get noticed because no scouts are coming up to Anchorage to watch you play. I knew from a young age that I wanted to make (those trips) worthwhile to make sure scouts started to notice me.”
No matter where the journey has led, the same qualities have stayed true in Swayman’s game. Immediate and continued success at the college sport’s highest level followed. To his coaches, it’s no secret why.
“His desire to compete was, really, unrivaled,” said Greg Vanover, who coached Swayman two years before his college career began with the Pikes Peak Miners, a U-18 team based in Colorado Springs. “I’ve had a couple other guys that went on to play Division 1 and some pro hockey, but he would not be out-competed. Whether it was playing checkers, in the weight room or buying shoes, it really didn’t matter for Jeremy. I recognized that early on and was able to tap into it because he thrived on being challenged.”
Swayman credits Vanover for changing his view in that area of the game during his year in Colorado, which came to fruition just by chance after he was cut following a North American Hockey League training camp with another Alaskan club, the Kenai River Brown Bears.
Swayman attended a summer showcase and made it to the All-Star Game prior to attending the camp, so the suggestion to play another year at the junior level during an exit interview was a head-scratcher. From his youth days playing for the Alaska All-Stars and Alaska Junior Aces organizations, among others, all the way up to the present, it remains the only time he has ever been cut from a team.
Though it was a tough pill to swallow at first, things turned out for the best as he considers Vanover to be one of the most influential coaches in his career and instrumental in his following exploits with Maine and the Bruins.
“That really changed my outlook on hockey because I was always that ‘golden child’ growing up in Alaska,” Swayman said. “Everyone looked to me to be that head goalie, but finally just getting cut I think was the biggest thing for my hockey career. It gave me a realization of how serious and how hard it is to make steps in this game, so I ended up not making Kenai and was kind of at a loss about where to go.”
Swayman had a chip on his shoulder as he was introduced to Vanover’s club and its established “Alaskan pipeline” shortly after his time with Kenai was cut shorter than anticipated. He ultimately was named an assistant captain for the Miners, amassing a .940 save percentage and leading the team to the North American Prospects Hockey League playoffs.
Most of Swayman’s plans for the following year involved NAHL teams, but only until the USHL’s Stampede drafted him in the 12th round after having never conversed before. He made the team out of training camp, and the doors to his future collegiate home quickly started to open.
Maine made its first contact with Swayman during a showcase in Sioux Falls and it was pretty much love at first sight. He had conversations with many college programs, but none felt as much like home as Maine did during an “honest and true” recruiting process with Gendron, Guite and then-associate head coach Jay Leach.
“When we were first recruiting Jeremy, we were really curious about finding out who he was at his core,” Gendron said. “He’s a highly dedicated and committed young hockey player. He wants to be outstanding and he’s willing to do the work even if it’s difficult. It was pretty obvious he had the mental capacity and the willingness to work to be the best he can be.”
Before Swayman made his clinching visit to Orono and committed, the conversations weren’t just about the vitals — the school, the campus, the tradition and a goaltending pipeline that includes the likes of present-day NHLers Jimmy Howard, Ben Bishop and Scott Darling as well as his own goaltending coach, Alfie Michaud.
Having remembered watching the Black Bears in Anchorage during his youth and later making them own his college team, it felt like his life in hockey had truly come full circle. But Swayman won’t ever forget that the staff dug even a bit deeper in their recruiting pitch.
“I’m a huge nature guy, always outside with a camping backpack and fishing,” he said. “I didn’t realize that would play such a role in my decision because Guite and Coach Leach found out — that I was so outdoorsy, loving nature and good scenery. It was after a game in Sioux Falls, and here they are talking to me about hiking trails and how the fishing was amazing. That was pretty special to me.”
Special, too, for Swayman was visiting “The Alfond” in person. The pep band and rowdy student sections that are more typical at hockey-crazy New England schools made for a different experience than the college hockey he knew in Alaska and sealed the deal in the recruiting process.
And Michaud quickly found out that Swayman is just as comfortable guiding the blue-painted crease as the woods of Alaska. Of course, Quinlivan and the rest of the Black Bears also found out. There was a lot to like from a coaching standpoint, including several key tools for any top goaltender.
“Athleticism and compete,” Michaud said of the words that first come to mind in describing Swayman. “He’s obviously got good size, but he’s an athlete, he just competes, and he’s very self-driven. He’s an all-in kid. It was a good foundation for him to turn into the goalie that he’s starting to turn into here.”
Michaud has not been the only former Maine goaltender helping to better Swayman over the past few years. Upon joining the Boston Bruins organization just prior to his freshman year, he met and began working alongside Mike Dunham, who was then the B’s first-year goaltender development coach.
The two have developed a close relationship, working together at the team’s development camp each summer since Swayman was selected. Michaud also keeps in touch with Dunham and the team’s National Hockey League goaltending coach, Bob Essensa, to alert them of Swayman’s progress throughout the year.
Swayman’s relationship with the Bruins is one that he feels is “pretty scripted” after having decided to move across the continent to play at Maine, and for good reason.
Last season, the Bruins advanced to the Stanley Cup Final with a roster that included seven first-time NHLers and a slew of second- and third-year players throughout the season. That’s all the example one needs to see how important developing young talent is to the organization.
With Swayman, improving upon the gains made with Michaud and the Black Bears remains Dunham’s top priority each year.
“Jeremy has continued to grow each year maturity-wise, strength-wise, experience-wise,” said Dunham. “That’s what you want to see out of young players — that continuing of them climbing the ladder to get better and better, stronger and stronger, and learning the game as they go. It’s a process to get to where they all want to be in the NHL and it doesn’t happen overnight. I was probably the same way in my own career, but Jeremy is a professional and he wants to get better every day.”
Swayman’s pure athletic ability helps him make, as Dunham put it, “a few showstopping saves” on pucks that look destined for the back of the net, but it is his ability to track pucks and remain in position for shots by trusting his feet that has helped him improve his game even more.
“It doesn’t matter the day in practice, when you go down to shoot on him it’s so hard to pick a corner because he’s good at being in positions,” Quinlivan said. “It can be demoralizing for us to try to score on him because he’s that good and just comes to play every day.”
In Swayman, Gendron also sees a goaltender who “came back in extraordinary shape” this season and has kept improving incrementally throughout his career. It has all helped him turn into one of Hockey East’s most consistent men in the crease.
With a handful of defensemen having either graduated or moved onto the pros since the end of last winter, Swayman will be an even more important leader as the Black Bears build back up for a new season.
No matter who makes up the line of defense in front of Swayman, the goaltender’s confidence remains the same.
“He just has that swagger and that confidence you want in a goaltender,” Michaud said. “We kind of play a game within the game, I think, as a goaltender because you’re back there alone. When you have a guy who believes in himself and puts in the work, it reverberates throughout the whole team. The guys feel it with Jeremy.”
Swayman feels that confidence right back in everyone around him. He’s fired up for a new season at Maine and knows the Bruins have his back all along the way, helping to shape a professional future that is, at most, a couple of years away.
He may be 4,400 miles from home right now, but Swayman has found himself a new home in New England and hopes there’s a place for him here for years and years to come.
“I couldn’t ask for more out here,” said Swayman, who also helped the United States win a bronze medal at the 2018 IIHF World Junior Championship alongside former Hockey East goalies Joseph Woll (Boston College) and Jake Oettinger (Boston University). “It’s so cool to have guys like Alfie and Dunham in my corner, and I’m really excited to keep working with them. The Bruins have been great about communicating and making me a better person and player.
“They have belief in their guys, and they’re not afraid to bring someone up, whether it’s a young guy or a veteran. They treat all of us prospects like professionals already so I think that speaks volumes. The organization really believes in us and has a high regard for all of their players. That makes me want to go the extra mile and get there sooner or later.”
