For the Bruins, last Saturday’s win over the Maple Leafs should’ve been the spark that finally — and, yes, I’m aware of how criminally early it is in the season to be using the term ‘finally’ in regards to anything involving the 2024-25 Bruins — got this team going and playing to their standard.
They faced adversity and overcame it, battling back from two separate deficits. They had to score in a variety of ways, too, and got contributions from all over the scoresheet in the process. Oh, and their captain finally got on the board with his first marker of the season.
It should’ve been a more-than-perfect building block that the Bruins parlayed into a relentless, bury-em-early kind of victory over a Philadelphia squad that came into Boston with just two wins on the year.
But things did not play out that way for Jim Montgomery’s Bruins.
Third Star: Tyson Foerster
Oct 29, 2024; Boston, Massachusetts, USA; Philadelphia Flyers right wing Tyson Foerster (71) celebrates with his teammates after scoring a goal against the Boston Bruins during the second period at TD Garden. (Brian Fluharty/Imagn Images)
It seems like every time the Bruins lose, it’s a ‘Bruins Killer’ stabbing ’em with a goal or two. Tuesday night was no exception there, really, as the Flyers’ Tyson Foerster opened this game with a second-period strike that ultimately held for the game-winning goal by the end of the evening.
For the 22-year-old Foerster, that’s now four goals (and five points) in four career games against the Bruins. That also means that Foerster has averaged 1.25 points per game against the Bruins since the start of last year. That’s tied for the third-highest point-per-game total against Boston over that span (minimum four games played), tied with the Panthers’ Aleksander Barkov and trailing only Nikita Kucherov (1.50 points per game) and Sam Reinhart (1.33 points per game) over that stretch. Some damn elite company.
Second Star: Joonas Korpisalo
DENVER, COLORADO – OCTOBER 16: Joonas Korpisalo #70 of the Boston Bruins tends goal against the Colorado Avalanche in the second period at Ball Arena on October 16, 2024 in Denver, Colorado. (Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)
If the first 10 games of the 2024-25 season have told us anything, it’s that the Bruins are going to lean on Jeremy Swayman as something closer to a workhorse goaltender. That’s new to both Swayman and the Bruins for that matter, really. The Bruins had targeted Swayman for about 55 starts this season — ex-Bruins netminder Linus Ullmark’s desire to start 55 games played a factor in their decision to trade him, as the NHL season is only 82 games, not 110 games, long — but his current pace has him slotted for something closer to 57 or 58.
So, if that pace holds, that leaves Joonas Korpisalo with about 25 starts to call his own. And if there’s a crime to be found within Tuesday’s game, it’s that the Bruins outright wasted his best performance yet.
It wasn’t a night that saw the Finnish-born Korpisalo challenge Ron Tugnutt’s record, no, as he was hit with just 18 shots by the night’s end. But the looks thrown at No. 70 were of the high-danger variety, and right off the bat, too, with Korpisalo making some downright dazzling stops in the opening eight minutes of the first period.
“I thought [Korpisalo] gave us an opportunity to win,” B’s coach Jim Montgomery said following his team’s defeat. “He didn’t face many shots, but he faced some high-quality shots, and I can think of at least three great saves.”
10 games in is not make-or-break time, and I’m not gonna pretend to tell you otherwise, but if a goalie who entered play with an .850 save percentage on the year (and had been sitting on the bench for 13 days) gives you this kind of performance, you gotta have something to show for it.
First Star: Samuel Ersson
Oct 22, 2024; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; Philadelphia Flyers goaltender Samuel Ersson (33) in the tunnel before game against the Washington Capitals at Wells Fargo Center. (Eric Hartline/Imagn Images)
The Bruins did not make life as hard as they could and should have against Samuel Ersson — a three-shot third-period performance comes to mind there — but a donut is a donut and the 25-year-old Ersson got his on Tuesday night behind a 23-of-23 performance against the Bruins.
Honestly, where Ersson (an .872 save percentage through six games entering Tuesday’s game) deserves the most credit in this one is for that third-period sequence where he somehow kept a sneaky Brad Marchand look from inching over the red and into the net for what would’ve been a game-tying goal.
