I guess you argue against it by suggesting that a legit second line player to help out Kane would make as much of a difference in terms of providing secondary scoring that we so lacked. No question LLW beasted, especially towards the end, but maybe having another line potting goals as a serious offensive threat makes more of a difference than replacing Pavelec.
But that is a gamble either way you go. We thought we had a 60 point man to play with Kane in Olli. Didn't work out that way. Maybe we go out and grab Bernier or someone similar but resign Hainsey and see as many goals go in on Bernier off Hainsey's arse as we did with Pavelec?
I'm not arguing that Pavelec doesn't need a push or, ultimately, a replacement, if he doesn't improve to around .915 or so. But I see the points about the lack of defensive help as being legit. Yep, there are lesser defensemen playing in front of better goalies and those teams are doing better, but I think you need to look up and down the whole team and you'll find there aren't a lot of goalies carrying teams during the regular season. You need to have more depth in scoring than we currently do. If you field LLW and Kane plus some legit linemates that can score, I think the soft goals become less significant. Still in need of fixing, but less significant.
But who do you grab to replace Pavelec? Can we afford to pay a Bernier and Pavelec at his current salary? Will anyone take Pavs at his current salary? Looking at last year's situation while I'd agree we overpaid Pavs, what were the other realistic options available at the time?
While I'm asking random questions what is the Jets philosophy on playing goalies? I know Pavs 'likes' to play lots of games but is that in line with what management wants? Do they really want a 1A/1B setup or are they happy with a 1A and a guy that they're really reluctant to play as it seemed to be this year? Even with Mason last year it seemed more like a 1A and oh crap Pavs is exhausted lets give him a game off and play Mason for one type of situation.
I just want to be clear i'm not blaming pav's for the loss. I'm not saying it's only because of him.
Just logically upgrading him would be the best upgrade. And a lot of it based around the point you made (we need to upgrade top six, but we tried to do that last year and it didn't work).
Lets assume the biggest things to upgrade on this team are our second line c/rw and our goalie.
for C/LW: we have below average players. Upgrading them is not surefire improvement, as their play is dependent on the system being played and working with their linemates (see Jokinen this year). We know this because we literally did this this year (Acquired Jokinen). It is also a position highly sought across the league, with more spaces then bodies.
all this means it will be
A)Expensive due to high demand
B)less likely to work (due to outside factors)
C) have no solid way of knowing if their will be an improvement or not (IE:the Jokinen effect)
D) Our "second line players" (wellwood, antro, jokinen) have Historically all produced pretty close to top 60 in their position points per/60 meanign they are only slightly below second line average, so it would take a larger improvement.
now we look at goal:
Pavelec is below average in every sense besides entertainment value. let me rephrase. In every "quantifiable" way, Pavelec is a below average starter, and its not exactly close. Goalies, as i have mentioned are also "on paper" easier to acquire.
Their performance is also largely independent of circumstances (
despite what many posters here like to believe, the research HAS been done and the evidence says no, no team is bad enough defensively to ruin a goalies stats despite what you think. Parity across the league is too close. people can disagree, but their opinion is disagreeing with research, which essentially means your just shutting your eyes and screaming "i can't hear you, i can't hear you") and thus you can generally assume when you pick up a goalie who's had a career good save % it will continue, not fluctuate because he isn't as effected by "the system" as a forward may be.
so here you kind of end up with
A)Cheap due to low spots vs players (young potential/good starters move for second round picks. Almost every year some goalie signed out of a different league comes in and makes noise, etc)
B) Unaffected by outside factors
C) What you see is what you get (though a goalie whose had a succesfull career may dip, rarely it is never sustained "due to the team")
D)We don't need to acquire an above average one for an improvement. The difference between pavelec and an average starter is bigger then the difference between most of our 2nd line guys and an "average" second liner.
that's just my logic.
And this got really long winded.
In general, i mostly agree with your statements, i just don't get how after two seasons here, and only one real good one prior, so many people are so tied to Pavelec.
he is statistically a bad goalie.
that cannot be argued.
I have yet to see an example of a statistically bad goalie who was considered great/above average during his career.
).This upcoming draft we will be getting a shot at a very nice asset in the first round (Yea it's not going to be one of the top 6 but it never was going to be this year). On top of that we will have 6 prospects chosen by time the 3rd round is done remember we only had 2 picks taken in 2011 in the first 3 rounds and for those of you that forget we got Lowry in the 3rd round in 2011 
