Boston Bruins reveal their plans with newly acquired goaltender

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Joshua Deeds
July 15, 2024 (11:48 PM)

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The Boston Bruins and GM Don Sweeney acquired Joonas Korpisalo in the trade for Linus Ullmark.

Korpisalo is set to come into Boston, as a backup to Jeremy Swayman and looks to change his fortunes in the Bruins system:

«Last year was a tough year for everyone in Ottawa. Change in the GM, the owner, all the coaches,» said Korpisalo, who ranked 97th out of 98 goalies in a stat called goals saved above expected by the fancy stats gurus at MoneyPuck. «It's a long season when it goes that way. And for me, individually, and I think the whole team, we did underperform all year. That's that.
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It's behind me, and I look back and obviously learn some things about it, and now it's a nice time to look forward and I have a great opportunity here with Boston and couldn't be more excited.»

The Bruins would receive the 25th overall pick in return with the former Senators goalie, and select Dean Letourneau in the 2024 NHL Draft.

While Letourneau's story has yet to be written, Korpisalo looks to rewrite his in Boston, as his contract has term left, at $3M x 3 years left after the 2024-2025 season. His time in Boston will give prospect Brandon Bussi to grow in net in the AHL.

But the Bruins believe that Korpisalo can find his old game, of which we saw him in the past make 85 saves against the Tampa Bay Lightning in the bubble, and saw him evolve into the Columbus Blue Jackets' #1 goalie for some time.

The Bruins are confident that goalie coach Bob Essensa can turn around the goalie's game, much like he did with Tuukka Rask, Linus Ullmark, Jeremy Swayman, and Jaroslav Halak.

A verifiable goalie whisperer during his career, he has produced some of the best Bruins goalies in the past decade.

«I think we feel very comfortable with him as a compliment and a guy that can push, because we feel that there's more ground for him to get back to when he played his best hockey,» said Sweeney to reporters at the NHL Draft when asked about Korpisalo. «We did that in years past when Jaro [Halak] came onto our teamagain, it's a projection.»

«But I think we feel comfortable in terms of stylistically, the competitiveness of the goaltender and Bob doing his work on how he projects into our lineup."

Korpisalo's 2023-2024 saw him record a: 3.27 GAA, .890 SV% and 21-26-4 record with hopes to improve.