I mean, first off, we did not get "goalie'd" by Ayres. Not even remotely close. Ayres sucked against us. He had an 0.800 SV% and a deeply negative GSAx, and of the 4 emergency goalies that have played in the NHL, he is the only one to allow a goal (he allowed 2). Carolina is who dominated the last period of that game that they were already easily winning, and it was pretty obvious that neither Toronto or Andersen had their A game or even B game that night long before Ayres came in.
As for the others...
Holtby: Vezina, Jennings, Cup, 0.926 career playoff SV% (97 GP)
Rask: Vezina, Jennings, Cup, 0.925 career playoff SV% (104 GP)
Rask: Vezina, Jennings, Cup, 0.925 career playoff SV% (104 GP)
Korpisalo: Playoff save record, 0.922 career playoff SV% (15 GP)
Price: Vezina, Jennings, Hart, Lindsay, 0.919 career playoff SV% (92 GP)
Vasilevsky: Vezina, Cup, Cup, Conn Smythe, single-playoff win record, series-clinching shutout record, 0.921 career playoff SV% (110 GP)
Vasilevsky: Vezina, Cup, Cup, Conn Smythe, single-playoff win record, series-clinching shutout record, 0.921 career playoff SV% (110 GP)
Bobrovsky: Vezina, Vezina
Any goalie can go on a hot run, but would it really be that surprising for these goalies specifically to go on hot runs? These were some of the best goalies of this era, that have demonstrated an ability to play at that high level for periods of time much longer than a series. The only one who isn't is Korpisalo, but a heavily injured Columbus that year was the best defensive team the league has seen in a non-Covid division year in over half a decade, and Toronto was playing a shortened best-of-5 games in 8 nights in a dead, crowdless arena in a bubble in the middle of a pandemic, after not playing and barely skating for 5 months, so it's a bit hard to look too much into that, especially when Korpisalo would continue on to put up the all-time playoff save record against the eventual Cup champs in the very next game.
Also...we did not get "goalie'd" in every series. This is the goaltending our opponents received in each series:
Washington 2017: +2.55 GSAx in 6 games
Boston 2018: +0.55 GSAx in 7 games
Boston 2019: +1.41 GSAx in 7 games
Columbus 2020: +6.00 GSAx in 5 games
Montreal 2021: +6.83 GSAx in 7 games
Tampa 2022: +1.53 GSAx in 7 games
Tampa 2023: -3.09 GSAx in 6 games
Florida 2023: +9.58 GSAx in 5 games
So in actuality, you could argue we got "goalie'd" in 3 of our 8 series - Columbus, Montreal, and Florida. Those are the only ones where the goalie performed above what is generally expected from them, instead of what is expected or worse. Two of those came during Covid with no crowds, two of those teams rode those goalies to the Stanley Cup Final, and none of those teams lost to anybody except the Cup champions.
Let's take a look at the goaltending that the teams that beat us received in their subsequent series:
Washington 2017 round 2: -3.75 GSAx in 7 games
Boston 2018 round 2: -0.29 GSAx in 5 games
Boston 2019 round 2: +6.88 GSAx in 6 games
Columbus 2020 round 1: +3.69 GSAx in 5 games
Montreal 2021 round 2: +1.82 GSAx in 4 games
Tampa 2022 round 2: +9.41 GSAx in 4 games
Florida 2023 round 3: +10.32 GSAx in 4 games
So in 50 playoff games against us, our opponent's goalies have averaged +0.507 GSAx per game.
In 35 playoff games against the teams our opponents faced directly after us, our opponent's goalies have averaged +0.802 GSAx per game.
So we're actually converting better than the teams that advanced and faced them next.
As you can see, it doesn't always happen to us. We've had it happen 3 times out of our 8 series, which would be more concerning if it wasn't happening even more to others who face the same goalies. And there's nothing that would really indicate Dubas being a factor.
Could there be something unique to a team that could cause them to "get goalie'd" more? Sure, it's possible.
Maybe the weight of the losses and market are making them hold their sticks a little tighter. (we averaged over a post a game in 2 of the 3 series we got "goalie'd" in)
Maybe the abnormal lack of PPs that we tend to get in our series benefits goaltenders. Maybe injuries have factored in, or the things our opponents disproportionally get away with.
But we're historically a good converting team, and pretty much everything indicates that the primary cause in the playoffs has been the goalies, some of the best goalies in the game, who go on to do the same thing to others. Who happen to be abundant in our division and conference on playoff teams, meaning we're going to run into them a lot. That doesn't mean that there aren't things we could improve, and maybe there is some deeper reason, but what we do know is it's not the reasons people spew, like we're soft, don't care, don't give effort, don't get good shots, don't go to the high danger areas, don't go to the dirty areas, etc. That's just objectively not true.
Most other teams lose against those things too, for the record, unless they have their own similarly hot goalie.
Tampa received -3.1 GSAx goaltending in the series, and Toronto received -1.6 GSAx in the series. We did not "get outplayed virtually the whole series". The series was basically taking turns significantly outplaying the other, and ended about as 50-50 as you can get - a 50.26 vs 49.74 percentage split. The only one trying to have their cake and eat it too is you, because pretty much any argument for suggesting we didn't deserve to win against Tampa this year would simultaneously mean that we deserved to win multiple past series.
