{"id":108273,"date":"2021-04-27T15:16:11","date_gmt":"2021-04-27T19:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/?p=108273"},"modified":"2021-04-27T15:16:11","modified_gmt":"2021-04-27T19:16:11","slug":"columbus-blue-jackets-lose-joonas-korpisalo-for-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2021\/04\/27\/columbus-blue-jackets-lose-joonas-korpisalo-for-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Columbus Blue Jackets Lose Joonas Korpisalo For Season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Columbus Blue Jackets have lost goaltender <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/k\/korpijo01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Joonas Korpisalo<\/a> for the remainder of the season due to an injury. This comes at a time where the Jackets are already in last place in the Central Division and have very little hope of salvaging a respectable season. The team announced the news Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The Blue Jackets announced that G Joonas Korpisalo will miss the rest of the 2020-21 season due to a lower body injury.<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/CBJ?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#CBJ<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Huntington_Bank?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@Huntington_Bank<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/vnQ3wRObb2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/t.co\/vnQ3wRObb2<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Columbus Blue Jackets (@BlueJacketsNHL) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BlueJacketsNHL\/status\/1387044025505484804?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">April 27, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Joonas Korpisalo Injury Ends Season<\/h2>\n<p>Korpisalo regressed sharply in 2020-21. The 26-year-old goaltender posted the worst numbers of his career with a .894 save percentage and 3.30 goals-against-average. That is way down from the promising .911 and 2.6 he posted last year in 2019-20. His step backwards in development and production is a huge reason why the Blue Jackets have had such a poor season overall.<\/p>\n<p>Columbus originally drafted Korpisalo in the third round of the 2012 Draft, but he has not been used consistently until recent seasons. He appeared in 31 games as a rookie in 2015-16, but just 32 combined over the next two seasons thanks to the presence of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/b\/bobrose01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sergei Bobrovsky<\/a>. Overall, Korpisalo has a career save percentage of .905 with a 2.90 goals-against-average. There is plenty of time for the Finnish netminder to recover and provide years of dependable goaltending service. That will have to start in 2021-22.<\/p>\n<h3>How Columbus Replaces Korpisalo<\/h3>\n<p>The immediate solution is to start <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/m\/merzlel01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Elvis Merzlikins<\/a>. The Latvian backup has appeared in 24 games in 2020-21 with a superior 910 save percentage and 2.94 goals-against. His backup will be countryman <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/k\/kivlema01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Matiss Kivlenieks<\/a>. He has not appeared in an NHL game this year, but does sport a .926 save percentage and 2.27 goals-against in seven games with the organization&#8217;s AHL affiliate. That duo will handle the net for the remainder of this campaign.<\/p>\n<p>This injury might spell the end of Korpisalo&#8217;s tenure with the Jackets. He wasn&#8217;t having a good season and the team has alternatives as it starts to rebuild. They could expose him in the expansion draft, but there is also a strong chance that he is just traded. It could be the first of several moves as Columbus tries to recover from an awful year.<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"8LaRDSBQTX5Oo6KavckuHA\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.ca\/detail\/1305410192\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'8LaRDSBQTX5Oo6KavckuHA',sig:'ck7VtUJaElWtOmV2AGE-IXzLsPDxxOJj4l6IgeqqM6Q=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1305410192',caption: true ,tld:'ca',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Columbus Blue Jackets have lost goaltender Joonas Korpisalo for the remainder of the season due to an injury. This comes at a time where the Jackets are already in last place in the Central Division and have very little hope of salvaging a respectable season. The team announced the news Tuesday morning. The Blue [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3127,"featured_media":108283,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11,4547,6671,34,4548],"tags":[1434,5738,707,2538],"class_list":["post-108273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bluejackets","category-hockey","category-injuries","category-news","category-nhl","tag-elvis-merzlikins","tag-hockey-news","tag-joonas-korpisalo","tag-matiss-kivlenieks"],"modified_by":"Dan Mount, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3127"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}