Joonas Korpisalo comes up big in crunch time in Bruins’ first home win

The Boston Bruins' goaltending tandem is 2-for-2 to start the season. Not to be outdone by Jeremy Swayman's season-opening dominance, Joonas Korpisalo came up with a number of big saves down the stretch of Game 2, ultimately helping lift the Bruins to victory.

Games like Thursday night at TD Garden are why wins and losses are attributed to goaltenders, and why they do in fact matter as a stat. It was certainly not a perfect night for Korpisalo, who gave up three goals on the Blackhawks' first 16 shots of the game into the third period. But after Chicago's Andre Burakovsky tied the game 3-3, it was lights out.

Korpisalo stopped the Blackhawks' final eight shots, including three in the overtime period, two of the highlight-reel variety. Much like the whole team is going to have to do in order to win a playoff-caliber amount of games, Korpisalo bore down and battled, and truly earned that first W.

Funnily enough, Korpisalo admitted that on his eye-popping OT saves, he made it harder on himself than necessary.

"Well, I misplayed it," Korpisalo said, "so that's why I had to kind of lunge over and just try to get something in front of the puck, and it hit the stick."

That it did:

Not long after Korpisalo's dazzling two-save sequence, Fraser Minten potted the game-winner to power the Bruins to four out of four points to begin the season. But Minten had to acknowledge that without Korpisalo's late-game heroics, he wouldn't have had that opportunity to win the game in the first place.

"Unbelievable. He was the game-saver, twice," Minten said of Korpisalo. "Unreal game by him. He's a great player."

Bruins head coach Marco Sturm said in his postgame press conference that Swayman and Korpisalo have been their best players over the first two games. Swayman certainly goes without saying, but it's notable for Sturm to put such high praise on the backup as well. Especially when it was shaping up to be a shaky night for Korpisalo, particularly on a goal by Blackhawks defenseman Louis Crevier in which he left way too much net open over his shoulder to the short side.

But a win is a win, and Korpisalo made the big saves when the moment called for it. The Bruins are going to need a lot of those moments in order to be playing in late April and beyond. So far, so good.