The Senators have found their goaltender.
Today the club unexpectedly announced that it had signed Joonas Korpisalo to a five-year contract that carries an average annual value of $4.0 million.
The structure of the deal works out as follows:
Year one: $4.0 million
Year two: $4.5 million
Year three: $5.0 million
Year four: $3.5 million
Year five: $3.0 million
Korpisalo is coming off his best season in the NHL. The Finnish goaltender played in 39 games between the Columbus Blue Jackets and Los Angeles Kings with an 18-14-4 record, a goals against average of 2.87 and a save percentage of .914.
Five years is an incredibly long commitment to a goaltender. The goaltending position is volatile at the best of times, so giving that kind of term is not without a substantial amount of risk. The fact that the 29-year-old has not played in more than 40 games during his eight-year NHL career is an additional concern.
Of those eight seasons, Korpisalo has only experienced three in which he stopped more goals than was expected. Evolving-Hockey’s ‘goals saved above expected’ (GSAx) metric quantifies how many goals were stopped than was expected given the shot quality faced. In his first two seasons in the league, Korpisalo stopped more goals than was expected before suffering through five seasons in which he gave up way more goals than was expected.
Korpisalo is coming off an impressive season, however.
Only 13 goalies in the league prevented more goals than was expected and it is this version of Korpisalo that the Senators hope they are getting.
HockeyViz.com has a nice breakdown of Korpisalo’s saves by shot type.
If there is an encouraging sign, it’s that Korpisalo is stopping a lot of the shots (wristers/snap shots) that he has time to read and adjust to. It is much more difficult to control tips and deflections, but he fared well there. It is also harder to replicate that success across seasons, so the fact that he didn’t stop a disproportionately higher volume of tips during his big year hopefully bodes well. We shouldn’t have to expect some wild swing of regression in a year that was inflated by stopping tips or deflections. Korpisalo’s kryptonite looked like slap shots or one-timers, but with improved luck there, perhaps there is even a chance he can be even better in 2023-24.
It is not without risk, but the free agent market for the next few years is pretty barren. Outside a few obvious names that would likely never sign here, the Senators were going to have to gamble on someone. And, for all we know, the Senators could have been engaged in contract negotiations with other goaltenders on much shorter-term deals. Bruce Garrioch linked the Senators to Fredrik Andersen earlier in the day, but he signed a two-year deal to return to Carolina. The term may be unpalatable, but Dorion may have felt it was necessary. Rather than be a bridesmaid in other talks, Dorion may have believed that this term was needed to ensure the Senators got someone.
One of the ways to mitigate against the risk was the structure of the contract. With a de-escalating salary, it will make Korpisalo’s contract easier to move or buy out down the road.
Today’s news also means that Anton Forsberg will be reunited with Korpisalo. Together the duo led the Lake Erie Monsters to the 2016 Calder Cup championship.
Another wrinkle with the Korpisalo deal is that it only cost the team money. The team did not have to move any player off the parent roster or move a consortium of future assets to bring him into the fold. The goaltending position was mentioned as something the Senators may be able to address with an Alex DeBrincat trade, so the fact that they could get this done without having to move any valued assets of their own is something to consider.
The term is not ideal, but the AAV is only slightly higher than what Talbot was making last year. Hopefully he’s an upgrade, and Forsberg can come back healthy (admittedly a big concern of mine, given the importance of knees to goalie agility).
Bummer that we missed out on Colin Miller for the low price of a late round draft pick though. Would’ve been a nice upgrade on RD for the back end.