By: Andrew Patten | Follow me on Twitter / X @a_patten11
Coming off their biggest win of the season, the Boston Bruins sit atop the Eastern Conference Wild Card race with 86 points. The team is also tied for third in the Atlantic Division with the Montreal Canadiens and sits four points behind the Tampa Bay Lightning for second place. It’s no secret the B’s wouldn’t be in this spot without the play of their number one goaltender, Jeremy Swayman. In the month of March, the Gold Medal winner has posted a 1.85 GAA and a .934 SV% across eight starts. There’s no question Boston will ride their red-hot netminder as much as they can in the final 12 games of the season. So, it begs the question: how much ice time will Joonas Korpisalo see?
In March, the Finnish goaltender has made only three starts, going 0-1-2, with a 4.57 goals-against-average. The last one came almost a week ago in New Jersey, where the Bruins let a 2-0 lead get away and found themselves leaving Newark with one point in the standings. Koprisalo was also in the net when Boston held a 3-0 advantage over the Pittsburgh Penguins, but couldn’t hold on to it, resulting in an overtime loss to the Pens. Despite the numbers he’s posted this month, the Bruins will need to rely on Korpisalo down the stretch. As much as Swayman? No. But there will be games where Marco Sturm will turn to his backup based on the schedule alone.
The Bruins find themselves with four more back-to-backs before the regular season wraps up. Two of which come this week. Boston returns to TD Garden on Tuesday against the Maple Leafs and will then head to Buffalo for a date with the Buffalo Sabres less than 24 hours later. It feels inevitable that Korpisalo will be between the pipes in one of those games.
The intrigue begins this coming Saturday and Sunday, as it’ll be the first of three straight weekends playing back-to-backs. In those games, Boston will match up against the Minnesota Wild, the Columbus Blue Jackets twice, the Tampa Bay twice, and finally the Philadelphia Flyers. Despite the significance those games hold for Boston, it would be a little unfair to expect Swayman to start all six. That’s where Korpisalo has a chance to come up big for the Bruins and be an X-factor down the stretch.
We know Joonas Korpisalo can string some wins together. We saw it in January, where he and Swayman were arguably the hottest goalie duo in the league. In six appearances that month, he went 4-0-1 with a 1.89 GAA, a .931 SV%, and posted his only shutout of the season. It helped earn him a spot on Finland’s Olympic hockey team as an injury replacement.
Something Sturm has done well this season is managing his goaltenders’ workloads. There’s no question that Swayman has seen an uptick in action in the month of March, but Marco knows he can’t drive that car into the ground. He’ll need to call upon his backup goalie to help the Bruins’ push for a spot in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. And if Korpisalo gets into a groove as he did two months ago—watch out.
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