Bruins goalie Joonas Korpisalo shuts the door on Penguins in 1-0 victory

Steve Conroy, Boston Herald on Jan 11, 2026

Published in Hockey

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BOSTON — The Boston Bruins’ cornucopia of goals from Saturday turned into a barren wasteland of squandered opportunities on Sunday.

But while most of the skaters had no more than their C-games, Joonas Korpisalo earned an A-plus, stopping all 27 shots he faced from the Pittsburgh Penguins, nailing down two important points for the B’s with a 1-0 victory at TD Garden.

The B’s are now 3-0 on their homestand and, with Sunday’s win, they jumped a point ahead of the Pens in the Eastern Conference standings.

The B’s clung to a 1-0 lead from the 11:00 mark of the first period and that was all they needed.

It wasn’t pretty. They had five-plus power plays but managed only two shots on the advantages.

The Bruins managed to take a 1-0 lead into the first intermission but they could have done a lot more damage. They were not as crisp as they were in the 10-2 drubbing of the New York Rangers, nor were the Penguins as cooperative as the Blueshirts were on Saturday.

Despite being given three power plays in the first, the B’s were not good at all on the man advantage.

Meanwhile, Korpisalo, who posted the win over Calgary last Thursday, had to be good in the first and he was, turning away all 10 shots. At one point, Egor Chinakhov had a clean break-in off the right wing that Korpisalo stopped and then absorbed Chinakhov crashing into him. Nikita Zadorov rather comically grabbed Chinakhov by the scruff of the neck and dragged him out of the net.

The B’s, who had an earlier Sean Kuraly goal rightly waved off after the centerman had punched the puck into the net, did get on the board at 11:00. Viktor Arvidsson had been in the thick of everything in the first two games of the homestand but had not been rewarded with a tally. He worked his way into the goal column on Sunday.

Henri Jokiharju landed a shot from the blue line that produced a rebound. Arvidsson simply out-battled Erik Karlsson for the puck and slipped a backhander under Stuart Skinner for his ninth of the year.

The missed opportunities continued to pile up in the second period. The B’s got two more power plays in the first half of the period and weren’t able to do anything with them. They went with the second unit to start the first PP of the period but that bore no fruit, either.

The Penguins finally got a power play of their own when Mark Kastelic was called for goalie interference when both he and Skinner went up to grab an airborne puck and there was contact. It wasn’t a great call, but you knew one was coming against the B’s soon. But they were able to kill it off and then survive a long shift inside their zone after the kill to preserve the slim lead.

The last five minutes of the period belonged to Korpisalo, who was terrific in protecting that lead. He made two straight saves on Sidney Crosby and his deadly backhand, the first one from the slot and the second from the side of the net with a whole lot of twine for the Penguin captain until Korpisalo’s glove came out of nowhere to knock away the puck.

Then in the waning seconds of the middle period, Tommy Novak was all alone in the slot but Korpisalo gave him nothing.

The game, however, was not trending in favor of the B’s. The Penguins outshot them 10-4 in the second and, in the few chances he saw in the period, Skinner seemed locked in as well.

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