It took Michael DiPietro nine years to finally get his first NHL win. Six days later, he added something else to the list.
On Thursday against the Nashville Predators, DiPietro turned aside all 28 shots he faced and picked up his first career shutout in the process. For a goalie who had already waited a long time for that initial breakthrough, this one came fast.
The Bruins have played 11 games as of Thursday night, and DiPietro has started only three of them. His first start of the season came against the Minnesota Wild, when he allowed three goals on 29 saves. His next opportunity didn’t come until the first half of the back-to-back in the California sweep, nearly two weeks later, and he gave up just two goals in that one before blanking Nashville.
That kind of spacing between starts would bother plenty of goalies. It doesn’t seem to faze DiPietro.
In the American Hockey League, he was used to a schedule built around waiting. Most of the games landed on weekends, with a few midweek dates mixed in.
He was usually sitting two to four days between games, then turning around and playing back-to-back as the starter. The NHL is different in some ways, but for DiPietro, the longer gaps between starts are nothing new.
Against the Predators, he looked like the same goalie who earned his reputation in the AHL. Shots didn’t get through him, and he stood out as one of Boston’s bright spots in the game.
Even with the Bruins jumping out to a fast lead, DiPietro never drifted out of the moment. Once the team went up 4-0 or even 5-0, it would have been easy to ease off mentally.
He didn’t. He stayed locked in until the final buzzer.
Right now, Jeremy Swayman will likely handle most of the starts this season, especially with the schedule less compressed than it was last year because of the Olympics. Swayman is the more experienced NHL goalie, and that matters. But if DiPietro keeps performing like this, there’s a path for him to earn a bigger share of the net as the season goes on.
If that happens, Bruins fans could wind up seeing something that resembles the Swayman-Linus Ullmark tandem from 2023. Nothing is replacing that duo, but DiPietro has at least given Boston a reason to think about another strong pairing in goal.
He’s backing up the résumé he built in the AHL, where he won the Aldege "Baz" Bastien Memorial Award as the league’s top goaltender in both 2025 and 2026, and also took home AHL Most Valuable Player honors in 2026.
For the Bruins, DiPietro looks like more than just a fill-in. He’s a real asset, and he seems set to keep growing while learning from Swayman and the veterans around him.
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