The Senators landed arguably the top goaltender on the market and got rid of a bad contract in the process.
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Boy, this is a tough one. Less than a week after the Calgary Flames traded Jacob Markstrom — who, mind you, has a full no-movement clause — to New Jersey for a first-rounder and defenseman Kevin Bahl, the Bruins traded a younger goaltender in Ullmark with better numbers, far less trade protection, and a Vezina Trophy win to his name for a demonstrably worse return.
While, yes, the Bruins did receive a first-round pick in this trade — their own 2024 pick, coincidentally — they had to take on the final four years of Joonas Korpisalo’s contract to get it. The Senators were kind enough to retain a quarter of Korpisalo’s cap hit, but that doesn’t change the fact that Boston now has the goaltender who saved the fewest goals above expected in 2023-24 (per Evolving-Hockey) on their payroll at a relatively hefty $3 million cap charge until 2028.
As mentioned, Ullmark has posted at least a .915 save percentage in five consecutive seasons. Korpisalo hasn’t reached that mark in the last eight. He’s posted some of the worst numbers in the league in three of the last four seasons, with the lone exception being 2022-23, in which he went 18-14-4 with a .914 in 39 games split between the Columbus Blue Jackets and L.A. Kings. His save percentages in the other three years of that four-year stretch? .894, .877, and .890. Yeesh.
Considering the term remaining on Korpisalo’s deal — and the extent to which he hampered Ottawa’s attempts at competing for a playoff spot last year —
it feels like the Senators should’ve needed to attach a first-round pick just to move him. Even with the caveat that buying out Korpisalo would cost relatively little, it boggles the mind that Boston took him off Ottawa’s hands seemingly without any additional compensation.
Was the market for Ullmark really that thin? Were there no offers out there that involved a first-round pick without the Bruins needing to take on a heavily problematic contract? It just feels like a bizarre misstep on Boston’s part to move someone like Ullmark for a return in which the value of a first-round pick is essentially negated by the inclusion of a deal like Korpisalo’s
. When the Arizona Coyotes traded the final year of Darcy Kuemper‘s contract to the Colorado Avalanche three years ago, they didn’t have to take on any bad money to extract a first-rounder, and neither did Calgary in the Markstrom trade.
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