Ottawa has been trying to fix their goalie situation every year, but it hasn’t worked out well.
Last summer, they signed Korpisalo to a five-year, $20M deal after he had a good season with Columbus and Los Angeles. But instead of improving, he struggled with a 3.27 GAA and a .890 SV%. Now, Boston will take on $3M of his cap for the next four years, while Ottawa will have $1M in dead cap charges. Ottawa hopes he’ll perform better in a more structured system like he did with the Kings in 2023.
Forsberg didn’t do much better than Korpisalo; his GAA was 3.21 and his save percentage was also .890. Sogaard, who is seen as the future goalie for Ottawa, also had issues with a 4.05 GAA and .859 SV% in six NHL games . Fans might think this constant search for goalies is getting old. Many thought Ottawa would go for another goalie upgrade this summer; Ullmark seemed like an option even though he was on their partial no-trade list during the season. However, things changed and now there’s talk about extending Ullmark’s contract once he’s eligible on July 1.
Boston’s New Additions
If Ullmark gets extended, he’d be the long-term starter while Sogaard would likely become his backup by 2025-26 after Forsberg’s contract ends. Boston is also adding Kastelic to their team. Kastelic played 63 games with Ottawa this season, scoring five goals and five assists while racking up 63 penalty minutes and 126 hits in under eight minutes per game on average. Over his career with Ottawa, he’s got 25 points and 331 hits in 144 games .
Kastelic is signed through the upcoming season at an $835K cap charge and will be a restricted free agent afterward with arbitration rights, so Boston might keep him around longer since they have several unrestricted free agents coming up.
Boston will finally get to draft in the first round again! If they keep their pick this time around, it’ll be their first first-round pick since taking Fabian Lysell at No. 21 overall in 2021 .
Interestingly enough, that pick has been passed around quite a bit—first moved for Tyler Bertuzzi at the trade deadline in 2023 by Boston to Detroit then sent to Ottawa as part of the Alex DeBrincat trade last offseason before making its way back to Boston now.
The swap between teams ends up being nearly cap-neutral: Boston saves $1.165M bringing their summer cap space just under $21.6M according to CapFriendly; meanwhile Ottawa drops down to $11.3M per CapFriendly too .
What do you think about all these changes?
