The Bruins have a Goaltending Problem
In the summer of 2024, the Boston Bruins made a decision that would shape their goaltending corps for years: they traded Linus Ullmark to the Ottawa Senators and acquired Joonas Korpisalo to serve as the backup behind Jeremy Swayman. Boston’s goaltending had long been a strength with airtight defense, elite starters, and reliable backups, but what the Bruins thought they were getting with this move hasn’t materialized the way fans and analysts hoped.
Today, we’re breaking down exactly why Joonas Korpisalo’s performance with the Bruins has regressed, what the expectations were going in, how he’s actually performed down the stretch, how he stacks up to other backup goalies around the league, and what Boston’s options are if they decide to pivot — including whether Providence has NHL-ready options.
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23 Comments
All stats are from before the game against Buffalo last night
Great video, thanks for the work!
The big problem is that the Defenseman suck! They refuse to play the body & that's why they will always lose!
Dump McAvoy, Lohrei & Peeke!
Bring up Pettersson & Blanar!
Get Marchand back & bring up the Draft kids!
Demote Korpisalo and bring up DiPietro. The guy needs a REAL shot in the NHL or whats the point of keeping him in the system at all?
LOL ya Peeke is great and Lohrei even better and Z couldn't have the strength to clear out Steebs in front.
Defensemen are part of the problem they stink !!
How's the Senators doing???
Korpi clearly can't see. He looks like the kid in class whose glasses keep falling down and they keep tilting their head back to look through them. Goalie Bob needs to have a talk with him about that helmet and cage.
As a fan of hockey goalies this year more than ever are getting scored on in the first 5-10 shots. I think it has everything to do with the systems teams have. For example, the Oilers have zero system in place not because of coaching but because of the players they have they are a run and gun team who leaks grade a opportunities for the opposition no matter who is in net. But you did nail the busier some goalies are the better they are.
Korpisalo needs to go ASAP
my faith in korpi dwindled after seeing Sturm start him against the sens again! the second i saw him in the opening commentary my exact words were "really? again? this game is already lost." He needs to be traded.
Swaymans tired? Really? He’s paid to be a starter … he should be playing 60 games ….goalies aren’t skating up and down the ice… tell that Weeney to get out there and earn his paycheck
Get off swaymans jockstrap, are you his lover or something… guy held out on the team now we have 2 terrible goalies
Letting bussi go stings so bad rn
Great post. Linus was approaching a high dollar contract extension and if Bruins kept him you'd have a bigger issue right now. He's terrible in Ottawa at more than twice the price. They took a shot on Korpisalo,(got Kastelic), and avoided a bigger bullet. (Can't believe I'm defending Sweeny here)
Vladar and Bussi are the regrettable names you let walk away. This team defence does not suit Korps game. Like Skinner in Edmonton, who isn't the greatest off the rush, goalie or the best East West guy, left him more vulnerable than you would like. I think the same situation applies here.
Question is what now. Get him contact lenses? Or , change your man on man D system that doesn't work great. ?? Also.
Marc Andre is available, lol.
The defense and the forwards look confused at times. In the case of the D-men, they're reeling because of injuries for the second year in a row. The forwards aren't helping out the defense too, so there's that. Now they're in a bad position with the goaltending not being able to lift them out of their doldrums. It's truly sad that the state of the team if in such confusion.
I would send Korpisalo down, no matter that no other team would grab him, it's addition by deletion. I would try Zajicek out first even though DiPietro has earned his stipes. DiPi is an AHL star goalie, and if Zajicek prospers it can open the door to exciting possibilities.
If he flounders, then give DiPi a shot. I'm sorry if this comes across as cold but this is a business and Don Sweeney protects his players like they're his children. That being said, there's the contradiction: At the 2025 TDL he traded several of his favorite "children" to kick off a "retool."
It was an admirable thing to do as he had to go against all that he believed in, in doing so. Don Sweeney (to my eyes) is a loyal, caring guy who understands what players go through and how it feels to be discarded.
For the second year in a row, if he doesn't fix this situation NOW, he's going to have to make even more painful decisions. If that all doesn't work, it may be Don Sweeney whose time has come.
He's been at the helm for slightly over ten years now, he's made some big blunders (mostly trading away huge assets to get rid of poorly performing free agent acquisitions, which led to his having limited picks at the draft and wasting them on head scratching reaches) that are well documented. He's also made some great trades that kept the teams nose above water.
If he is fired, there will be a long list of teams lined up to hire him at a premium price.
The root cause of the Joonas Korpisalo problem begins with Don Sweeney
Sweeney botched the timing of the Ullmark trade while at the same time due to his poor drafting and developing, also put himself in a position where they had to get a 1st round draft pick in part of any deal for Ullmark
Those conditions in turn shrunk Boston’s market for Ullmark down to Ottawa
Overall, Korpisalo has been a below average netminder in his career with a few periods of being just okay
A big problem problem?
Let’s take a look at the Boston Bruins at 5×5:
23rd Shots Against
28th Scoring Chances Against
28th High Danger Chances Against
32nd and dead last in xGA
32nd and dead least in Minor Penalty Minutes
Don Sweeney also decided to bring in a coach in Marco Sturm whose man-to-man defensive structure is predicated on a BIG THING…
Being able to skate well and the Boston Bruins are a bottom 5 skating team in the NHL
So Sweeney traded for a below average back up goalie, to play for a team that is bottom 5 in just about every 5×5 key defensive stat, playing in front of a defense that plays a structure that is designed in nature to play against what they do well
100% yes Joonas Korpisalo is a below average backup goalie but I’m not sure any NHL backup would do all that better
Again, this is another Don Sweeney problem as he's done a piss poor job of drafting and developing
Who's Boston’s best drafted NHL goalie prospect right now?
Um, no one because the only guy is really Philip Svedeberg and he’s not even an NHL backup level player
Dipietro is not an NHL goalie either despite what Bruins homers think. Just go talk to the guys who cover Providence full time. He’s a 4A player. Think Georgii Merkulov, just the goalie version
And who knows what Simon Zjack is as he’s just an undrafted rookie who just came over to North America thus there’s zero chance they bring him up to be the backup this season.
This is 100% why the Bruins are stuck with Korpisalo, they don’t have any other real other options at the backup goalie position besides him
I’m not letting Korpisalo off the hook, he needs to be better but again, who did the GM think he was getting when he traded for a bad backup goalie in the first place?
There is no easy answer to this because if they bury Korpisalo in the minors and Dipietro comes up and gets shelled (which is very likely) now what?
Also, no other NHL GM is claiming or trading for Korpisalo which means they have no options this year unless they are willing to part with an asset to get some other team to take all or even just part of his contract which is something I don't think the Bruins would do
Why?
One, The don’t have the assets to part with in those kind of ‘fix Don Sweeney” mistakes deals anymore
And two, there is no guarantee if they were to move an asset with Korpisalo to get rid of him that Dipietro would be any better
When your farm system is still largely bad you cant just piss away draft capital or prospects "hoping" that it may fix a mistake
The Bruins are miserably defensively and Korpisalo was never a good backup goalie to begin with
This marriage was clearly never going to work, it hasn’t and it never will
But again, what are the other options?
All of them are lousy & none of them will make the Bruins even fractionally better anyway because they're rotten defensively & take the most penalties in the NHL
Any backup level goalie talent wise would & will struggle here
The only path to not buryimg Korpisalo's contract in the minors or ever just being able to trade him without attaching an asset to the deal would be the Bruins playing better in front of him & Korpisalo playing better behind their defense
I'm not sure either of those two things will happen anytime soon thus we're back to the fact that they don't have any good options at the backup goalie position & it's the GM that is responsible for this
Blaming Korpisalo when he sucked in the first place, when he's been put in a position to suck worse than he normally would while he didn't trade himself here…
I don't know
That'd be like blaming the iceberg for hitting the Titanic & not the Captain that steered the vessel into it
great video as always, presenting facts to support the comments.
Korpisalo is not living up to what he needs to be… He wanted more games but is showing he can not handle those games.
Swayman is playing above where he was last year, and he is not really getting left in for blow out after blow out like last season.
The defense leaving guys open in front of the net, players being able to screen the goalies, and poorly blocked shots being redirected in.
For some reason peeke is on the ice waayyy to much!
He was on the ice and screened korpisalo twice last night.
Lindholm everyone said without him the team just breaks down. Peeke and Lindholm are just unable to defend in front of the net and can’t break the puck out.
The forwards for some reason think the backhand pass is the best thing to do, and cause turn overs.
The team is for sure on a skid right now, sturm needs to figure out what is going on.
Giving up 16 goals in 3 games is not just a goalie issue, that is a team issue.
I still genuinely cannot believe the Bruins at one point had the best goalie tandem in the league, a great prospect for either trades/call up in Brandon Bussi, and a genuinely decent outlook for at least the next few years, then decided to blow it all up for literally no reason by trading Ullmark for Korpisalo, immaturely starting a public feud with Swayman like they hadn't already gotten rid of their only bargaining chip, not re-signing Bussi only to have him immediately show he has what it takes, then signing hordes upon hordes of mostly 3rd and 4th liners for all their open spots. Sweeney and Neely are still there pretending like they're trying to win a Cup, and the Jacobs family goes along with it because they don't care since they assume people will still pay to see their original six team lose to the 2025-26 Vancouver Canucks like the suckers we are
There's no cure for STUPID!
THERES YOUR PROOF !
Why does everyone blame the goalies? If your defense is crap and your coach is barely a coach what do you think will happen??? The management makes idiotic moves, the owner is a cheapskate so the B's are stuck with bargain hunting. The opposing teams are entering the defensive zone with impunity, the defense can't get out of it's own way. Are these the best goalies in the league? No, but they need a better chance by having their defense do it's job. The goalies are just the spanking board and excuse for a poorly talented and badly coached squad. Pray for a quick end, this is painful to watch.
The sad thing is that it really looked like they had a chance to be a dangerous team this year. Now they have dropped off a cliff, and I believe, just like last year, that the team is losing confidence and everything is unraveling. They are not just losing. In the last three games they have been soundly beaten.
He needs sun block on the back of his neck