Bruins goalie Linus Ullmark’s ascent to the NHL elite: How one technique tweak

The maneuver Bob Essensa wanted Bruins goalie Linus Ullmark to execute measures only two inches. Two inches. That’s all it would take, Boston’s longtime goaltending coach thought, for Ullmark to unlock a whole new level.

“Backflow” is the term Essensa uses for it: a situational backward movement a goalie employs, for example, on a point shot.

“Just a few inches,” Essensa says. “You get to your spot at the top of the paint. Typically when that happens, you’re going to have some sort of net-front (presence). So you get up to your net-front guy, give a little push-off, create that backflow. In my mind, and hopefully in their minds, you get to a second chance, a deflected puck, a rebound situation, a broken play quicker than they would have had they just been planted at the top of the paint.”

Everything has gone right for Ullmark in 2022-23. The 29-year-old is playing behind what could be the winningest regular-season team in NHL history. He is in the second season of a crackling partnership with Jeremy Swayman. He optimized his equipment to the point where he scored a goal with his custom Bauer stick. The father of two is enjoying the payoff of last year’s midseason move.

It may be that Ullmark’s incorporation of backflow has prompted his greatest degree of puck-stopping prowess. Two inches of drift have enhanced just about all of his strengths, from squareness to recoveries to puck play, to the point that he leads the league in every traditional goaltending category: wins, goals-against average, save percentage. The general managers will determine whether the Vezina Trophy should be Ullmark’s reward for all of these accomplishments. He is deserving.

Essensa says backflow is “certainly the biggest” improvement that’s led to this success.

For nearly all of 2021-22, his first season in Boston, Ullmark didn’t want to do it.

Backflow’s benefits

Picture a car in city traffic. It stops and starts repeatedly. All that braking and accelerating produces wear and tear.

Goalies are the same way. For Ullmark, 20-plus years of exploding off his edges, slamming on the brakes when he hit his spots and plunging into the butterfly made his groin, hips, knees and hamstrings pay the price.

Now, imagine the city car executing a rolling slowdown instead of a full-out stop. Not only is it easier on the brakes, but it allows the car to get up to speed quicker when the light turns green. 

This is how backflow works on the ice. Tuukka Rask and Tim Thomas, two of Essensa’s previous pupils, used it well. Drift helped Rask and Thomas deaden first shots and gave them momentum to win races to rebounds. In Game 4 of the Bruins-Leafs Round 1 series in 2019, Rask’s recoil on Ron Hainsey’s point shot positioned him perfectly to kick out Connor Brown’s net-front bid.

“Creating that backflow, creating a little bit of recoil, hopefully would allow him to stay healthier. Knock on wood, it has to some extent,” Essensa says of…