The Boston Bruins are two days away from the start of their 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs, and with the Toronto Maple Leafs standing in the way of Boston advancing out of the first round for the first time since 2021.

And the number one questioning facing the Bruins between now and the pregame warmups for Saturday’s 8 p.m. Game 1 at TD Garden is who gets the call in goal for the Black and Gold. And who gets the call two nights after that, for that matter.

The Bruins have been rolling with a steady every-other rotation between Linus Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman since late February, and given that, it almost stands to reason that the Bruins would go with that in the postseason. Especially after Jim Montgomery & Co.’s deviation away from that ultimately accelerated the club’s downfall in the first round of last year’s postseason.

But Bruins general manager Don Sweeney isn’t going to tip his hand, not publicly anyway, when it comes to how the crease will be managed this postseason.

“I guess I'll sum it up in the fact that we're very confident in our goaltending,” Sweeney said following Thursday’s practice at Warrior Ice Arena. “I think it's been a strength of our hockey club for certainly the past two years. And, you know, the noise that necessarily goes on outside is not [noise that] necessarily filters as much inside as to what people may believe, because our goalies know what the plan is.

“They know what their strengths are for our hockey club and how much we rely on them. And performance and results will dictate some of this. But we know what the plan is going in. And so do they, and we're comfortable with it.”

What that means is truly anybody’s guess.

If the Bruins are going to roll with the hot hand, Ullmark would be the guy to begin things for the Bruins. Over the strict every-other rotation the Bruins have rolled with since Feb. 21, Ullmark has posted a .919 save percentage, which ranks 10th among the group of 53 goalies with at least 10 appearances over that span. Swayman, at .902, ranks 30th among that same group of 53.

But if the matchup itself means anything, it’s worth noting that Swayman has been tremendous against the Leafs this season, with three wins, a 1.30 goals against, and .959 save percentage (93 saves on 97 shots) in three head-to-heads. In fact, you can argue that Swayman’s best two post-All Star break games have come against Toronto, with a 32-of-33 performance against the Leafs on Mar. 4 and a 28-of-29 against ‘em just three nights later.

Something that’s important to note when it comes to Sweeney’s comments in regards to the plan in goal is that performance and results will dictate it.

When Montgomery talked about a potential playoff goalie rotation recently, he mentioned that the plan would be to go back and forth between Swayman and Ullmark for the first four games and then decide who would get the call moving forward should the series extend beyond four games.

Going down 0-2 — or even going up 2-0, for that matter — could change how the Bruins feel about that. But for now, how exactly they feel about it and how they’re going to use it will remain a state secret.

“We're very comfortable with both goaltenders,” Sweeney reiterated. “They know the plan as to what we're going to do, and our team is very comfortable with both goaltenders. So, performance and results may change what our approach looks like, but we know what the plan is going into the playoffs.”

Injury updates

It appears that it will be all systems go for the Bruins’ Brandon Carlo when things get underway on Saturday night.

Carlo, who was injured in the penultimate game of the regular season and then held out of Game 82, was a full participant in Thursday’s session and looks good to go for the Black and Gold backend. The expectation is that he will begin his postseason on a second pairing opposite Matt Grzelcyk.

Elsewhere on the backend, the Bruins made an interesting move on Tuesday with Derek Forbort assigned to Providence on a long-term injury conditioning loan. The plan is for Forbort, who underwent two separate surgeries not that long ago, to try to play in this weekend’s P-Bruins slate and become an option for the Bruins down the road. Until Forbort and the Bruins go through that, however, he’s considered a longshot of an option to legitimately return to the B’s lineup.

“That's a wait and see,” Sweeney told me. “I mean, Derek [Forbort] has made great strides, and little bit surprisingly, to tell you the truth, he was on an operating table not too long ago for two different situations. So, good on him and good on the training staff. We still have an undetermined timeline in terms of how he's going to continue to progress. But it's certainly a positive sign that he's made the progress that he has, and credit to Derek to tell you the truth… because he could have just arguably shut things down completely. But he wants to play, he's a gamer and wants to play, he wants to see whether or not the healing process can continue, and if he becomes a factor at some point in time during the playoffs.”

Up front, winger Justin Brazeau remains week-to-week for Boston, and the Bruins don’t want to tip their hand too much when it comes to his availability.

“He's coming back from an injury that… the timeline as we described is week to week,” Sweeney said of Brazeau’s current timeline. “I still think we're in that week-to-week phase, so the early part of the series is very unlikely. We're hopeful, but there's no guarantees on that one. That one's going to take some time. He is skating, clearly, but he has some hurdles to get through.”

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