The Bruins’ backup goalie picture is suddenly worth watching, and Michael DiPietro sits right at the center of it.
With Joonas Korpisalo now traded to the New York Rangers, the natural assumption is that DiPietro will slide into the NHL role full time. But Boston hasn’t handed him the job just yet, and that’s where the story gets interesting.
Jeremy Swayman is locked in as the No. 1 after the Bruins moved Linus Ullmark to the Ottawa Senators, and after a shaky first season in that role, Swayman bounced back last season and finished as a finalist for the Vezina Trophy. The question now is who backs him up.
DiPietro has a strong case. He’s been in the Bruins’ system since the 2022-23 season and has been excellent in Providence, winning the Aldege “Baz” Bastien Memorial Award as the AHL’s most outstanding goalie in each of the past two seasons.
He also became the inaugural winner of the Doug Messier Award, given to the AHL’s most outstanding player. Over the last two seasons, he posted a 60-16-6 record with a 1.94 goals-against average and .928 save percentage.
At this point, he’s done more than enough in the AHL.
Still, Boston added another name to the mix on July 1 when it signed Jiri Patera to a two-way contract. The 27-year-old from Prague has 122 career AHL games on his resume, going 51-56-9 with a 2.84 goals-against average and .907 save percentage.
He also has nine NHL games under his belt, including one this past season with the Vancouver Canucks. That experience matters, even if the results have been uneven.
In that outing with Vancouver, he allowed seven goals in 57 minutes of action. Overall, he owns a 3-4-1 record, a 4.01 goals-against average and a .892 save percentage in nine NHL appearances, with eight of those coming for the Vegas Golden Knights between the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons.
Patera’s presence doesn’t change the fact that DiPietro looks like the favorite. If anything, it gives the Bruins a little insurance and some competition in camp.
Patera was briefly in the organization in 2024 and will likely spend this season in Providence, where he could absorb some of the starts DiPietro had been taking. But if something goes sideways, Boston knows there’s another option.
For now, the backup job is DiPietro’s to lose. The work still has to be done on the ice, but the Bruins have set up a real battle behind Swayman as training camp approaches.
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