Over the last 24 hours, Boston Bruins general manager Don Sweeney has been cleaning up some restricted free agents of his own to deals ahead of the official start of free agency on Tuesday. In the last 24 hours, Sweeney has brought back Marat Khusnutdinov, Michael Callahan, Michael DiPietro, Henri Jokiharju, and John Beecher.
After bringing back Mason Lohrei a week ago, it's not surprising to see Sweeney bring those players back. However, bringing back DiPietro could, and honestly should, signal the end of Joonas Korpisalo's future in Boston, for a number of reasons.
Bruins re-signing Michael DiPietro signals a trade could be coming
As the Bruins' frustrating 2024-25 season was winding down, one player who was not happy with his playing time was Korpisalo. Acquired from the Ottawa Senators last June in a trade that sent Linus Ullmark to the Ottawa Senators, Korpisalo was not bad for Boston this season as Jeremy Swayman's backup.
Korpisalo had what could be considered a bounce-back season under Bruins' goalie coach Bob Essensa with an 11-10-3 record while sporting a 2.90 goals against average and a .893 save percentage. All of those numbers were an increase from his time in 2023-24 with the Senators, which really isn't saying a lot.
At the end of the season, the netminder through the coaching staff under the bus with his limited playing time, and his agent gave Sweeney an ultimatum to play him or trade him. The latter sounds good right about now. I'm not sure how many more games he envisioned himself playing after Boston shelled out $8.25 annually to Swayman.
Moving Korpisalo would be a dream for the Bruins now that DiPietro is locked up. It frees up more cap space for the Bruins' front office by getting out from under Korpisalo's $3 million AAV. If there is one thing we've learned recently, it's that the Black and Gold need all the cap space they can get this offseason.
DiPietro was expected to get a ton of interest from teams if he indeed did hit free agency on July 1, but now that he's re-signed, it's time for Sweeney to try and move his disgruntled goalie for more cap space.