Michael DiPietro’s afoot and ready to be the Bruins’ backup plan behind clear No. 1 goalie Jeremy Swayman
Michael DiPietro, currently to be Jeremy Swayman’s partner in net when the Bruins open the 2026-27 season, has been at this goaltender thing for the better part of 20 years.
He vividly remembers sitting next to his father Vic at a rink in his hometown Amherstburg, Ontario, when Mark, his stepbrother and house league goalie, made a dazzling stop on a breakaway. The smattering of people in the stands let out a cheer for the 14-year-old.
And it was that moment that changed everything for 7-year-oid Michael.
“I turned to my dad and said, ‘Dad, I want to be a goalie!’ ” recalled the Bruins’ backup stopper in waiting, who turned 27 last month. “And he looked at me like I had 10 heads, his face went white, and he was like, ‘Ohhhhhh … nooooo.’ I’m pretty sure his credit card bent in his pocket as soon as I said it.
“I just loved how a goalie can be an X factor in a game.”
Barely a month later, wearing equipment bought and borrowed, DiPietro made his netminding debut. His days as a self-described “chubby-faced” defenseman were over.
“I came out with all the equipment on, stepped on the ice, and fell flat on my face,” he said. “I didn’t realize goalie skates weren’t like regular skates.”
It can be a pricey, unpredictable, and very often frustrating path for goalies to find their way in the game. DiPietro, about to begin his ninth pro season and with only four games of NHL experience, has lived through more than his share of those twists and turns — including a season in Maine, his first as a Bruins employee, that briefly had him contemplating a change in career.
“Maybe being a policeman or a firefighter,” he said. “Just somewhere you work with a team. I think that’s something I could have gotten into, been passionate about.”
As it turned out, that 2022-23 season with the Maine Mariners provided DiPietro with a career reset, along with an altered perspective about the game. He spent the previous season, prior to being dealt to the Bruins from the Canucks for forward Jack Studnicka, tending net for AHL Abbotsford. Getting assigned to the ECHL, by any reasonable measure, could not be interpreted as career advancement.
“Without using too many expletives, yeah, that was a pretty tough point in my career,” DiPietro said. “I started in the American League my first year [pro] and then my second year, I was basically in a bubble as a third goalie and didn’t play a hockey game for 417 days. So for me, that third year pro [with Abbotsford], I’d forgotten how to play, forgotten my practice routine … and then … I’m in Maine.”
The day he was assigned to the Mariners, it was a call home during the drive from Providence to Portland that helped DiPietro shift his focus. His dad, who more than 15 years earlier heard him plead to be a goalie, heard his son ask, “What am I doing?”
Just stick with it, Vic told his son. After all, the two had endured bigger things. Much bigger, including the death of wife and mother Becky DiPietro, when Michael was just 5 years old.
In the span of three years, recalled Michael, they lost Becky and also both of Vic’s parents. Father and son for years had been side-by-side in the family car for countless long rides along Highway 401 for AAA games. When Michael flew out of town to be part of a high-profile junior tourney in Fargo, N.D., Vic surprised him by driving “16 hours, through the night,” his son recalled, to make the opening faceoff.
“Suddenly, I see this bald head in front of me and it’s my dad!” Michael said. “And I was scratched, the third goalie that night. Didn’t even play. So my dad and I sat in the stands together and watched — just another reason I love him.”
Soon after arriving in Maine, DiPietro began to “find” his feet. It’s a term he uses often, his expression for focusing on the moment and “blocking out noise,” be it from the stands or inside his head.
“When I got to Maine, it was, you know, just go find the love of the game again,” he said. “Just block out everything and go have fun. Those guys play because they love it. Being where my feet are and just being happy with that allows me not only to be happier and in a way better mental space, but in terms of being able to play more freely. You’re just going out there and playing the game you love.
“Goalies definitely take a weird path. Very few get a straight shot, but you know, I wouldn’t change a thing. It’s brought me to where I’m at today, where I am in life.”
DiPietro was promoted to Providence the next season and worked aside No. 1 stopper Brandon Bussi. By the end of the following season, DiPietro had moved ahead on the organizational depth chart, a shift that led Bussi to depart via free agency in July 2025.
Less than a year later, Bussi took charge of the Hurricanes’ net late in the Stanley Cup Final and backed Carolina to its second title. He actually began the season in Florida’s training camp and went to the Hurricanes via waivers in October. (Exhibit A in the unpredictable path of goalies.)
Then came July 1 this year. As was long rumored, Joonas Korpisalo was traded off the Boston varsity, to the Rangers. By nightfall, general manager Don Sweeney declared the path officially clear for DiPietro, confident he can handle the next step.
DiPietro knows, however, that’s only part of the puzzle.
“[I have to] go and earn the job. That’s been my mindset since I turned pro — just put my head down and work,” DiPietro said while also noting how much he appreciated Korpisalo as a goalie, as a teammate, and as a person. “Especially coming to Boston, again, being where my feet are … I know that might sound cliché, but it’s true. It’s how I want to live.
“For me, it’s an opportunity and that’s fantastic, but that’s all it is: an opportunity. I need to take it, try my best, and be a great teammate. That’s what I hang my hat on — do all that and try to be a good human being. Because at the end of the day, that’s how you win.”
DUCKS IN ROW
Carlsson contract offers future issues
The Ducks beat Friday’s deadline by about 24 hours to match the Flyers’ gargantuan offer sheet on Leo Carlsson, keeping the talented Swedish pivot on the payroll for five years and $90 million. Carlsson, 21, will receive all but $4.7 million of the contract, a fraction over 5 percent of it, through signing bonus.
The offer sheet, even before it was matched, caused a pricey ripple effect on the Anaheim payroll. Amid rumors last weekend that emerging defenseman Pavel Mintyukov likewise was about to be tendered an offer, the Ducks promptly signed the 22-year-old Russian to a five-year, $36 million extension out of his expired entry-level contract.
It represented nearly an eight-fold increase over Mintyukov’s original cost per season in a deal signed soon after he was the No. 10 pick in the 2022 draft. The contract left the Ducks with some $27 million in cap space — ample room to match Carlsson’s offer, but not enough to also take care of Cutter Gauthier, the ex-Boston College winger whose ELC also expired this spring.
Gauthier, picked No. 5 by the Flyers in the 2022 draft and later dealt to the Ducks, knocked home a club-high 41 goals last season and was also the Ducks’ top point producer (69).
In the soaring summer of ’26 salary market, Gauthier could land $12 million a year, which initially had general manager Pat Verbeek contemplating a Gauthier-or-Carlsson decision or in need of culling salary elsewhere on his roster.
Conventional wisdom points to Verbeek keeping Gauthier and wheeling out a body or two among veteran forwards Chis Kreider, Alex Killorn, and former Bruin Frank Vatrano — a trio with a combined average annual value of $17.35 million. Their average age is over 34. Looks to be a no-brainer that one or two must go, perhaps with Anaheim forced to retain some of the money.
The Carlsson offer sheet isn’t necessarily a game changer in terms of other franchises rushing in to filch high-end talent by similar means. More broadly, hand in hand with the escalating cap (tethered directly to the league’s gross receipts), it likely will drive up the price clubs pay to retain talent in their top-end and mid-level salary ranges. Example: the bet here a couple of weeks ago was the Bruins could extend Pavel Zacha’s stay (his $4.75 million deal to expire next spring) for something around Charlie McAvoy money ($9.5 million AAV). Now? As the Black and Gold’s No. 1 center, less than 12 months from reaching unrestricted free agency . . . fill in the blank.
Is it $12 million a year for Zacha? Maybe $14 million? Whatever it is today, it will be more next summer.
Local father-son agents Matt and Ryan Keator handled the Flyers-Ducks machinations on Carlsson’s behalf. Matt structured the deal that brought Zdeno Chara to Boston as an unrestricted agent in July 2006, when $7.5 million a year was what it took to secure a franchise defenseman.
ETC.
Langenbrunner clocks out in Boston
Jamie Langenbrunner abruptly exited the Bruins’ front office in May, interviewed for what was then the open GM position in New Jersey, and signed on with the Predators in mid-June as a special assistant/advisor to new GM Chris MacFarland.
“It was time,” said Langenbrunner, reached via phone the other day at his home in Minnesota. “Donnie [Sweeney] was great to me for a lot of years, gave me an opportunity to figure out what path I wanted to go, coming out of being a player … find a fit.”
According to Langenbrunner, 50, he had the opportunity to remain in his role as Bruins assistant GM, and said his departure “wasn’t about the money” or adding a title. Instead, it was about his urge to learn what opportunities might exist for him elsewhere and a chance to expand his knowledge base with a different organization.
“And if nothing had worked out,” mused Langenbrunner, “I would have been happy just being home, being a dad and a grandfather.”
The end of his 11-year run with the Bruins coincided, too, with son Mason’s graduation from Harvard, where he suited up on the Crimson blue line the last four seasons. A Bruins draft pick (2020, No. 151), Mason opted to retire his skates while pursuing a business path as a partner in a couple of start-up companies.
“I was fortunate enough to see him play his last college game, pretty much knowing that was going to be it,” said Jamie. “Kind of sad to see it end, but it’s good to see your kids go after their passion. He understood how much you have to put into chasing the other [hockey] dream. He made more of a business decision than a heart decision on it, which isn’t always easy for a 23-year-old.”
Langenbrunner’s gig in Nashville will be very much in lockstep to the niche he carved out here — scouting the NHL and other pro leagues, with an eye trained on identifying players that could come to the Predators one day by trade or free agency.
It was helping the Bruins spot some underused assets around the league — he gave forwards Zacha and Marat Khusnutdinov as prime examples — that Langenbrunner found to be his most satisfying contribution.
It’s also the role, he figures at the moment, that he’d like to remain in for a long time. Perhaps, if the fit were perfect, he’d consider being a GM. Beyond the Devils, he spoke informally with another club about its No. 1 job, but overall felt “I love the role I’m in — finding players, building the team, I think that’s more in my wheelhouse … I kind of like being under the radar.”
All about Bob
In case you missed it, veteran goaltender and two-time Stanley Cup winner Sergei Bobrovsky found a new home for the next three years, signing on with the Maple Leafs for $21 million total. “Bob” will be 38 by season’s start and looks a little long in the tooth for Toronto to be rolling out that kind of dough.
Maybe the Bobrovsky-Anthony Stolarz partnership works for the Maple Leafs as it did for the Panthers in 2023-24 en route to the Cup. Perhaps this time, Stolarz carries at least half the workload.
The Bobrovsky acquisition brought your Faithful Puck Chronicler a good chuckle, dating to June 2021, when I proposed on Twitter that the Maple Leafs try to acquire Bobrovsky at a 50 percent discount on his $10 million AAV with the Panthers. I added the idea of finding someone to take 12-year veteran pivot John Tavares for a similar discount and also dealing off William Nylander, then age 25, for what surely would have been a motherlode of assets. He was young and under contract control — potentially worth a franchise defenseman in return.
The reaction among Maple Leafs fandom? I picked carbon splinters out of my backside for a long, long time.
Bobrovsky went on to win the Cups. Toronto rolled along with Jack Campbell and Petr Mrazek for a while, and kept both Tavares and Nylander, the latter of whom continued working for a cap hit of some $7 million before upgrading to his current $11.5 million.
Oh, and the Maple Leafs subsequently have turned over the front office twice. They also lost four of six playoffs series over the next four postseasons prior to their 2026 DNQ.
But wait, there’s more.
After doling out whopping salaries up front (see: $11.5 million for Nylander), they were forced a year ago to part with Mitch Marnerfor the stocking stuffer that was Nicolas Roy (dealt after 59 games). The Marner loss was inevitable due to roster imbalance — too much money tied up on a slick, soft front end and very little bite in back.
The proposal was all barstool fantasy, but fun fodder to consider, even more now than then for some of us. The Maple Leafs continue their search for their first Cup since 1967.
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