Fair enough. I agree he didn't steal the series against STL, but he was Chicago's best player in it.
He didn't need to be. The Blues team we played from game 3 on was probably not even a playoff caliber team with the state of their forward corps. Everyone was hurt. Some were playing at about 40%. How quickly people forget that they didn't score more than 2 goals and were shutout three times in their last nine games of the regular season... and that was WITH Backes. Once Seabrook blew him away, that series was over. So if we are going to give any credit to anyone, it's probably Brent.
As for Minny, they will never be a match for the Hawks. They haven't had an offense worth mentioning in at least eight years, mostly because of chicken%@*$ '90s style coaching.
It is easy to look good against teams like that.
Here's the thing, Chris. The goalie is the most important position on the team. This means the goalie has more impact on the game than any other single player by default. Starting goalies in the NHL all have to be able to win games that their team isn't playing strong in, or they are not starting goaltenders. Crawford absolutely is a starting goalie and is quite capable of winning games.
I think you would agree with that. But here's where we diverge. You see Crawford as winning games and therefore he is elite. I see him as doing absolutely nothing that other starting goalies in the league wouldn't do just as well with the Hawks in front of him. Not the worst of the starters, of course. But nothing special either. Because watching other teams play without having the Hawks in front of them shows just how easy a time Crawford actually has of it out there compared to what other teams' goalies have to deal with.
Many fans here only really see other goalies when they PLAY the Hawks - the best offensive team in the last five years or so, often significantly so. So they routinely see guys like Kane and Toews scoring and routinely see the other goalies getting hammered, while Crawford almost always has a much easier offense to deal with. But that's not typical leaguewide. If Crawford had to play against the Hawks... well, take a look at his L.A. performance. He held them under 3 goals once, under 4 goals twice, in seven games, and averaged four goals against per game. This is more than Niemi in San Jose, more than the platoon of goalies Anaheim used, and more than Lundqvist gave up even prorating to seven games. Crawford was the weakest goalie the Kings faced in four playoff rounds, albeit with a big asterix in the case of Gibson. I know, some people are going to blame the defense, and it's true, the Hawks have the weakest defense of the four teams the Kings played... but not THAT much weaker (9 more goals against throughout the regular season than the Ducks, 19 more than the Sharks, and 22 more than the Rangers), and were still in the top half of the league.
So while you argue "well he wins games", I say "yes, he does... but so can everyone else." I ask "is Crawford doing anything that most the other starters in the league couldn't do?" You may say yes, you may not. But that's why I don't see Crawford as a top goalie. With a team that has the puck as much as the Hawks do with as much depth as the Hawks do, what he does just isn't that impressive, and he probably should not have been given that contract. If the Hawks ever lose that depth that allows them to generally dominate other teams all over the ice, we'd see what he was REALLY made of, just like we see what Hawks backups are made of away from the Hawks (cough Emery). But whenever we get an apples to apples comparison, he just doesn't seem to really be that good relative to the other starting goalies of the league. Quite average, really. Not among the worst, not among the best. So I just can't give him the credit you and others do.
One more thing. A lot of people blame the Hawks defense, or team defense, for goals against. There is actually a goaltender related reason for the way the Hawks frequently collapse down low - Crawford gives up absolutely gigantic rebounds, and does it all. the. time. The coaches have decided to make up for this by making sure there are more Hawks near the crease or slot than opposing players (at least in theory).
I am not really going to get into Schneider - I don't like to judge goalies early in their careers - but I will absolutely compare Crawford to a very similar goalie in terms of the situations they are in... Osgood. Crawford is the Hawks version of him.
