Joonas Korpisalo is fully aware that he’s going to be entering Boston with some questions to answer.
“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.
“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 netminder is coming into Boston as a trade piece that was ostensibly included in the Linus Ullmark deal to make certain that the B’s received a first-round pick as part of the package coming their way. The Black and Gold selected 6-foot-7 Dean Letourneau with the 25th pick, but he isn’t likely to be a contributor until at least three years down the road as he settles into Boston College for next season.
The three years down the road is also the amount of time, presumably, that the 30-year-old Korpisalo is going to be around with three years on his contract at a cap hit of $3 million per season. It’s certainly a more expensive backup goalie option than Brandon Bussi might have been, but the guess here is that Bruins management was very nervous about a thoroughly green rookie backing up Jeremy Swayman in his upcoming first season as the unquestioned No. 1 goalie between the pipes.
And just as strongly there is a Bruins belief that goalie coach Bob Essensa can get the best out of the veteran Finnish netminder just as he’s done with Ullmark, Swayman, Jaroslav Halak, Tuukka Rask and unforgettable household names like Chad Johnson, Anton Khudobin, Jonas Gustavsson and Niklas Svedberg that have come through over the last decade-plus of Bruins hockey.
“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 team…again, 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.”
So Korpisalo comes in as an experienced backup goalie with nearly 300 games of NHL experience and just a couple of years removed from a very strong season spent with both the Columbus Blue Jackets (.913 save percentage in 28 games) and the Los Angeles Kings (.921 save percentage in 11 games).
None of that even mentions the .922 career save percentage in 15 Stanley Cup playoff games played between Columbus and Los Angeles as well.
Is Korpisalo a massive salary cap albatross as a $3 million per season player? No, he most definitely is not and is more of a slightly expensive veteran backup as Halak was for a few seasons behind Rask.
None of that is to excuse a poor performance in Ottawa last season, however, as Korpisalo played behind a poor defensive Senators team and finished with a 3.27 goals against average and .890 save percentage that was amongst the worst of an NHL career where he’s averaged a .901 save percentage.
But the B’s needed an insurance policy just in case there are any kind of growing pains as Swayman ascends into a franchise goalie that’s capable of playing 60 plus games per season after never playing more than 44 games in an NHL campaign. Korpisalo will be that guy for the time being if he shows that he’s up to the task in training camp while knowing full well that Bussi will be nipping at his heels as a young goaltender that’s already put up some impressive performances at the NHL level.
There are plenty of critics that have already panned Korpisalo’s presence before he’s even made a save for the Boston Bruins because fans overestimated Linus Ullmark’s value to the only team in Ottawa that he could really be traded to this offseason. But shouldn’t everybody see how things play out a little bit given how important goaltending has been to the B’s formula for winning over the last few years.
Korpisalo has an entire NHL body of work that says he should get the benefit of the doubt that he’s much better than his worst NHL season.
ONE TIMERS
*Oskar Steen clearly wasn’t coming back to the Boston Bruins after being waived in the middle of last season, but he has decided to return to his home country of Sweden and has inked a long-term deal with the Farjestad club that came up through the ranks playing for. The 26-year-old Steen finished with just one goal in 34 games for the Bruins at the NHL level after playing well in Providence but is likely done with hockey in North America after playing in Boston/Providence for the last five years after being a sixth-round pick in the 2016 NHL Draft.
“Farjestad is the club at heart, it feels fantastic,” said Steen in an interview with Swedish media outlet VF.
*Similarly, Bruins depth goaltender Kyle Keyser is jumping to the KHL and has signed a one-year contract with the Kunlun Red Star for next season. The 25-year-old netminder never actually logged an NHL game for the Boston Bruins over the last five years after being signed as an undrafted free agent and actually spent more time with the ECHL’s Maine Mariners last season than he did with a P-Bruins team that was stacked with Brandon Bussi and Mike DiPietro between the pipes.
*The Boston Bruins are down to Marc McLaughlin and Swayman as the only unsigned restricted free agents that still need to be taken care of after signing defensemen Michael Callahan and Alec Regula this past week. Both blueliners were signed to one-year, two-way deals for $775,000 after strong AHL seasons for the P-Bruins, where they figure to be major contributors this season. They aren’t really expected to see much NHL time, however, unless injuries really become a factor for the Black and Gold on the back end. But it leaves the B's with some significant work to still be done with McLaughlin and Swayman this summer before they've finished out their RFAs in need of contracts.