SUNRISE, Fla. — Just past the midway point of the second period, Panthers fans started mocking the Bruins.

Florida had already put five goals behind goalie Joonas Korpisalo, who had a dubious start to his Boston career. They wanted fresh meat and began chanting:

“We want Swayman!”

That was about the only thing the Panthers fans wanted and didn’t get on Tuesday. After their banner celebration before the game, Florida came out and skated past, over and through the Bruins, 6-4.

Coach Jim Montgomery stood by Korpisalo, who gave up all six goals, and his decision to keep him in.

“Korpisalo was not a problem tonight. It was the people in front of him,” he said. “You can’t give up four backdoor tap-ins and expect your goalie to make save after save. He made a lot of saves on breakaways. He was good tonight. The rest of the team? The coaching staff? We weren’t good enough. … Their execution was really good, our execution was really poor. I can’t pinpoint why we looked slow, but we looked slow the entire game.”

Korpisalo finished with 29 saves. Montgomery was right that some were very good. But he also allowed six goals including a couple that weren’t so good. He gave up a lot of rebounds and was helped by a crossbar.

The Bruins need to be better to win games no matter who is in net. Korpisalo needs to be better for Boston to be successful no matter what happens in front of him.

Still, It was just one game. Every goalie from Tiny Thompson to Vladislav Tretiak to Martin Brodeur has games like this. And the Panthers are the defending Stanley Cup champions for a reason. But the timing reinforces the worries that surrounded Korpisalo’s acquisition.

The concern when the Bruins traded Linus Ullmark was less about whether Jeremy Swayman could handle an increased workload, but how the team would do when he wasn’t starting. This was the first start by someone other than Ullmark or Swayman since Keith Kinkaid’s one-game cameo in November 2022. Other than that, every night for the past three seasons, the Bruins have had an All-Star goalie in net.

Korpisalo is coming off the worst season of his career with a 3.29 goals-against average and a .890 save percentage. The Bruins believe goalie guru Bob Essensa could help turn around the 30-year-old Finn. And he very well might. But that might take some time.

He had a strong training camp early and beat out Brandon Bussi for the backup goalie job. But he struggled a little in his final preseason start and it appeared to carry over on Tuesday. The Bruins don’t need Korpisalo to be Ullmark or even Jaroslav Halak, but they’ll need him to give them a chance to win on the 25-30 games he starts during the season.

His next test is how he bounces back. Can he shake this off and improve? If he’s good next time out, nobody will care what happened Tuesday.

But if Game 1 was a sign of things to come, the Bruins fans might be the ones chanting for Swayman.