Player Discussion: Andrei Vasilevskiy - Part 2
- Thread starter LightningStrikes
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FinnLightning26
Death and no taxes
They're now inventing shit to not say he wasn't the greatest player ever in that game.
Bozo Nicholson
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- Jun 6, 2015
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Major4Boarding
Unfamiliar Moderator
I’m going to chalk this up as exhaustion and some other noticeable factors. But it also bringing to the surface what has always been his flaw. You have to go all the way back to 2012 and the knock on him was long range shots. And for those that watched the 2013-2013 Worlds, you saw a couple of seemingly routine shots fly by (especially high)
We’ve all enjoyed the benefit as he progressed, and as our defense progressed, that those came (thankfully) few and far between. But let’s call it for what it is. He’s exhausted. The defense in front of him is nowhere near the shot-blocking machine like it’s been since the year before the 2020 cup up till last season.
Our defense has been subpar at best this season. Missing McD, and I’ll put it in writing even though I use to bag on the guy all the time, Rutta… Hell even Schenn (ironically). Those guys would effectively block shot lanes from beyond the tops of the circles effectively - night in a night out.
We’re not seeing that now. We’re also not seeing our defense getting in their opponents faces and closing their gaps upon entry. It’s been a pet peeve of mine all season watching them collapse below the face off dots when the puck is still barely over the blue line and going man to man.
I’ll have to go look it up but I’m curious to see what 88’s shot total and save percentage is when Cernak was out of the lineup this season. My point is we are missing the routine shot blocks.
Let’s call it for what it is. From 0 to 15 feet out from the net, Vasilevskiy’s the best in the league. 15 to 25 feet out he’s in the top five. Past the top of the circles… Kryptonite.
So I for one am withholding throwing any darts on this one and if I choose to do so later, it sure as Hell won’t be towards the dude in net. I’ll start throwing them towards the bench, towards the suit and tie guys.
It’s their job to figure this shit out. To make the adjustments, which we haven’t seen any (at least I haven’t). And Coop, you and Julien better find the moxie to have a sit down with our netminder over the summer and explain that, although his courage is admirable, that 55 games is going to be your limit going forward.
And JFBB better be getting himself in the position of getting a solid back up that’s going to play between around 25 games with a couple spot reliefs mixed in.
88 needs to slow it down before you grind him out of usefulness before he hits 33
We’ve all enjoyed the benefit as he progressed, and as our defense progressed, that those came (thankfully) few and far between. But let’s call it for what it is. He’s exhausted. The defense in front of him is nowhere near the shot-blocking machine like it’s been since the year before the 2020 cup up till last season.
Our defense has been subpar at best this season. Missing McD, and I’ll put it in writing even though I use to bag on the guy all the time, Rutta… Hell even Schenn (ironically). Those guys would effectively block shot lanes from beyond the tops of the circles effectively - night in a night out.
We’re not seeing that now. We’re also not seeing our defense getting in their opponents faces and closing their gaps upon entry. It’s been a pet peeve of mine all season watching them collapse below the face off dots when the puck is still barely over the blue line and going man to man.
I’ll have to go look it up but I’m curious to see what 88’s shot total and save percentage is when Cernak was out of the lineup this season. My point is we are missing the routine shot blocks.
Let’s call it for what it is. From 0 to 15 feet out from the net, Vasilevskiy’s the best in the league. 15 to 25 feet out he’s in the top five. Past the top of the circles… Kryptonite.
So I for one am withholding throwing any darts on this one and if I choose to do so later, it sure as Hell won’t be towards the dude in net. I’ll start throwing them towards the bench, towards the suit and tie guys.
It’s their job to figure this shit out. To make the adjustments, which we haven’t seen any (at least I haven’t). And Coop, you and Julien better find the moxie to have a sit down with our netminder over the summer and explain that, although his courage is admirable, that 55 games is going to be your limit going forward.
And JFBB better be getting himself in the position of getting a solid back up that’s going to play between around 25 games with a couple spot reliefs mixed in.
88 needs to slow it down before you grind him out of usefulness before he hits 33
I know that Vas should be given the benefit of the doubt. However he has struggled. I wonder if Cooper would take a page from the New Jersey Devils last night when they inserted their third string goalie Akira Schmid. They bypassed the current back up Mackenzie Blackwood in the process. For Cooper that potential option is Hugo Alnefelt in Syracuse.
These Are The Days
I need about tree fiddy
Why be logical when we can just say he sucks?
Major4Boarding
Unfamiliar Moderator
I’m huge on Alnefelt but he needs another full season in Syracuse and then most likely another 2 seasons of call ups before we really get a read on where he stands as this organization’s #2
He’s just about near turning 22 years old. He needs more time
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Because by and large, the reasons don't matter. He's been bad in all three games, and he wasn't very good for most of the season, and much of the last one.
Even in Game 2, we were outplaying the Leafs... and then suddenly we're down 3-0 because we gave up 5 shots. Of course that kind of game is gonna get out of hand, because playing defense is no longer an option.
He didn't play up to his standards, but to say he wasn't very good for most of the season is quantifiably wrong. He finished 9th in save percentage - the most important individual goaltender stat to me - and 6th in wins, which shows his team was very successful with him in net.
Last year he finished 11th in save percentage, and first in wins.
His play has been declining, probably correlated with the team's losses at forward and defense the last couple years, but this is losing perspective on how bad of a decline it's been so far, at least in the regular season.
His play in this postseason has been far below his standard - but weren't several people here mocking JB for saying he was happy with our defense after the trade deadline? And that's when the unit was healthy. In game two, we played without Hedman and Cernak. The skaters played a great game 3 for the most part, but a defenseman playing the way Cole does on goals #1 and #3 put it on a struggling goalie to stop an unimpeded shooter in the slot and in the crease. It's overly simplistic to put it all on Vasy. Blame Cole along with Vasy because he deserves it.
I do agree on game 2, Vasy deserves the majority of the blame, giving up goals on some really ugly looking long shots.
In the season, Vasy started poorly, then got it together for a while, and then finished poorly. Which has bled over into the playoffs.
Yes, the defense had a few lapses -- that's never going to not happen. Vasy gets paid 9.5m because he's not supposed to need perfect defense to win a game. Last night he had about as good a defense as you can expect against a high-powered team like Toronto, and he gave up 4 goals on 27 shots. The game before, he gave up 3 on the first 5.
We're paying Ian Cole $3m. A $3m defenseman is going to make some mistakes. And if some of those mistakes turn into goals, we still let Vasy off the hook if by and large he is making key saves.
I mean, is Toronto playing immaculate defense at the other end? Is Samsonov never facing high danger chances? I don't think it's unreasonable to be disappointed when your 9.5m goalie is rarely the best goalie on the ice. And I also think it's unreasonable to blame the defense when, by and large, they've been keeping Vasy's workload lighter than Samsonov's.
A few lapses is one thing. Letting one of their best forwards do his thing with the puck in our crease when there's less than a minute in a one goal playoff game is a "whopper", not a "lapse". And please explain to me how Cole is playing good defense on the first goal? I need to know what I'm missing on that play.
I'm not saying Vasy is making key saves. I said in my reply to you he was playing far below his standard and he cost us game 2. I'm also saying Cole played terribly on two of the goals against in game 3. I've also said Sergachev has continued to make really bad plays with the puck in our zone. Simply saying Vasy is the problem is only half of the picture. A 3 mil defensemen should know what to do on goals #1 and #3.
I'm disappointed in both Vasy and our defense. A lot of people on this forum were voicing there disappointment when JB didn't add any defensemen at the trade deadline, but now all most people are talking about is Vasy. I believe you call that "cognitive dissonance".
...Because our defense has been miles better than Toronto's. Lapses or no lapses. Our offense has been miles better than Toronto's. The one and only area where the Leafs have been better than us is in goal, and that's saying something, because Samsonov has been pretty average.
DrMartinVanNostrand
Kramerica Industries
I'm gonna start off by saying that, when you're the 2nd highest paid goalie in the league, finishing 9th and 11th in S% is absolutely nothing to write home about. If he finished top-5, I wouldn't quibble, but anywhere beneath that relative to his salary at his position and it's categorically underachieving.
That being said - now in his defense - if you look at Goals Saved Above Expected, he has been top-5 each of the past two seasons. He finished #2 last year and #5 this year (min. 50 games played). He was also top-5 the last two seasons in that stat per 60 minutes (the first stat is a counting stat, so more GP = better chance to pad the number; the 2nd is a rate stat). Our harshness, in that sense, is a byproduct of high expectations but also because we don't have quite the defense corps anymore - that is, Ryan McDonagh - that we used to have.
In that same statistic, in the extremely small sample size known as the playoffs, he ranks 19th out of 20 goalies who have played so far this postseason (stats not updated for today's games yet) and worst among starters. He's -3.1 in that stat. I dunno if that stat can be parsed to find game-by-game stats on it, so whether he's had a stretch as bad as that this season, I have no idea. But -3.1 through 3 games...do the math, he's spotting Toronto a free goal per game. Samsonov hasn't been much better himself at -2.2, but he does have a standout game on his profile for this series now, while Vasi doesn't, and that's the difference in where we're at right now.
Weird things happen in small sample sizes. Unfortunately, every playoff series is a small sample size, and having a bad stretch at a bad time will generally lead to bad outcomes. He got better as last postseason went along, and was a big reason we beat Florida and New York while Point was injured; even losing against Colorado he didn't exactly disgrace himself, we just didn't have enough offense to keep up and couldn't win the special teams battle. But he wasn't very good against the Leafs in the 1st round until the very end of the series, either; he got better as it went along, but was lucky to have enough rope left to begin with given how the 1st round went. We might not get so lucky this time around.
As someone else said earlier either in this thread or in last night's GDT - we go as Vasi goes. When he's had strong postseason performances, we've gone to the Cup Final three times and won twice. When he's been horrific, we've been a #1 seed that got swept in the first round. If the $9.5M goalie is going to be the worst starting goalie in the playoffs, then we won't be playing in them for much longer. He owes this team one after last night, and hopefully we'll get a vintage Vasi performance or two before this series is over. We get that, we can overturn 2-1 down just as we did a year ago. We don't, and we'll be shaking hands probably on Thursday night.
This. All the criticism goes away if he turns the jets on. But, as of now, he is the clear reason we are behind in the series.
Sky04
Registered User
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Paul had the same chance as ROR, difference is Samsonov stopped it. Our defense is not the issue this series, if you're disappointed in it then you're being absolutely unrealistic, imagine thinking adding a random 5/6 dman at the deadline is going to stop the Leafs offense.
Todd1a
Kucherov or prospect
Todd1a
Kucherov or prospect
I mean he’s giving up 11 goals in the last two games your not advancing with that type of goaltending.
Sky04
Registered User
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Didn't think Vasi could top his 2019 Columbus performance but boyyyyy did he prove me wrong.
Stammertime91
TBL: TEAM OF THE CENTURY
Yeah. I'd say for him this is definitely worse. You won't hear the team say it aloud but they all know it. Tampa collapsed the house a few too many times going for the team shot blocking because confidence is low.
Sky04
Registered User
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Oh absolutely, there were quite a few all hands on deck moments in front of the net and still ended up giving up 4 goals straight.
Sky04
Registered User
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I mean a coach can only do so much.. it's up to the player to execute. It's not like this has always been the case either, he used to track pucks so well even if it was deflected or tipped, he's just dropping the ball.
Stammertime91
TBL: TEAM OF THE CENTURY
Wait, he's saying from when he was with us right? If so, why is shadowing the point and neglecting tie ups in front occurring? Cause we back the f*** up from their defense. Like, a lot. We've seen the deflections from missed assignments but the coverage at the point is shit. You could see it clear as day after the 2nd goal (Matthews wrister) they were playing at the top for a reason. Lo and behold...
