Toggle sidebar

Dan Cloutier

Back in the West Coast Express era, I felt he was a great regular season goaltender, but you knew the collapse was coming at some point in the playoffs.
 
Benedict Kovalchuk said:
One of those rare players that you can pin the exact moment his career started going down hill. Cloutier was the single biggest hinderance the WCE-era Canucks had, one wonders where a slightly better goalie would have taken that team.
Click to expand...

Naslund and Bertuzzi were ********** useless in the playoffs. Between them they have 1 career playoff GWG. And that was a 4-1 goal in a game that ended 4-3. No goalie was getting those 2 through to anywhere. The Lidstrom goal is often held up as some sort of beacon of suckage, but from that point on in the series (Canucks up 2-0) those 2 combined for 1 point. (I think it is 1, maybe 2?)
 
He was a good but not great goalie up until the Lidstrom goal. That broke his brain and he started getting the goalie equivalent of "the yips".

Then he started having nagging knee and groin injuries, and for a while there was one of the worst #1 goalies I have ever seen. Especially when the chips were down. He pretty much lost the '03 Minnesota series single handed. Just a terrible display of goaltending

He was pretty much done after that. Even Alex Auld outplayed him.
 
hamzarocks said:
Looking at past threads and peoples comments and they acted like he was a scrub. I want to know was he a good, bad or okay goalie stats wise he is subpar but he has 3 30 win season and 140 career wins, plus his 3 goal against average, is from 15ish years ago which was a much higher scoring era even great like roy and brodure had plus 2.8 gaa from that era, is the guy under appreciated
Click to expand...

The dead puck era was named as such for a reason. It wasn't a "much higher scoring era".

Anyhow, Cloutier isn't blamed for regular season statistics, so that's a red herring. Although his regular season numbers:

http://hockeygoalies.org/bio/cloutierd.html

Were somewhere between "replacement level" and "league average".

By the way, Brodeur *never* had a regular season even close to a 2.8 GAA, so I have absolutely no idea what you're trying to sell. Other than the season where he played four games, Brodeur's highest GAA was 2.57.

Roy's seasons of that sort were truly in a higher scoring era.

As far as the playoffs, Cloutier was decidedly subpar, which sounds like it'd be a good thing given how it was derived from golf, but it's not.
 
Benedict Kovalchuk said:
One of those rare players that you can pin the exact moment his career started going down hill. Cloutier was the single biggest hinderance the WCE-era Canucks had, one wonders where a slightly better goalie would have taken that team.
Click to expand...

He and Tommy Salo. Both guys, you knew the moment those goals went in from centre ice, it was over for them
 
He wasn't bad in the regular season but he was an absolute playoff choker. Most remember the Lidstrom goal that completely turned that Detroit series around, but he was worse the next year when Vancouver had a legit shot at the cup because of some playoff upsets. But Cloutier had this way of letting in goals at the worst times and he handed the Wild the series.

It's weird how he never faced near the amount of criticism that Luongo did but he hurt the team a lot more. I think because he wore his heart on his sleeve people felt for the guy a bit more, unfortunately that's not what wins hockey games.
 
this picture doesn't exist for no reason

beachball.png
 
I met Cloutier once outside of Vancouver's airport...

He had man hands


I'm 6'3, so it's not often someone makes me feel small
 
CanuckGame39 said:
Cloutier was a warrior for the Canucks. Back then the Canucks fans were ruthless towards our goaltenders.

Ill say he is in the top 3 best goaltender the canucks ever had. He was one of my heros growing up. Loved the guy.
Click to expand...

Oh, come on. McLean, Brodeur, Luongo, Maniago... I'm probably missing one in there, too. Cloutier is no better than fifth all-time among Canuck goalies.
 
Cloutier was a talented goalie who had no durability. He won NHL's player of the month once, and player of the week at least a couple times, but always in October, November, December. Crawford overplayed him. I remember reading an interview with a physician who said Cloutier's body wasn't right for being a goalie. He should have been a 1a or 1b goalie, or a backup. He was skilled but couldn't last. By the end of the season he was exhausted from fighting injuries and always faltered down the stretch and in the playoffs.

Cloutier's failures should really be attributed to Marc Crawford.
 
Great to see a thread about a player who wasn't an all-time great. I was always very partial to Cloutier. I thought he might be able to fashion out a Kelly Hrudey-like career: never a top goalie, generally inconsistent, but always capable of getting hot and carrying his team. I think that 2002 playoff really sapped whatever confidence he had, a la Roman Turek. That and injuries of course.
 
For me, seeing a game with Cloutier in net was like watching a baseball team with one of those wildly inconsistent closers. Give him a two-run lead going into the 9th, and one of three things will happen.

- He'll either mow down the opposing team on 12 pitches, OR

- He'll give up two doubles and a home run, and just like that the game is lost, OR

- He'll walk the first guy, get to a 3-0 count on the second guy before allowing a single, then the next guy walks....maybe he settles in and gets the save, maybe he gives up a bases-clearing triple and takes the loss

Regardless, there's never a dull moment. There was no sense going into a game that he had a 90% chance of playing well and a 10% chance of a meltdown....it was more like a 10% chance of standing tall, a 30% chance of a meltdown, and a middle 60% where he'd be launching rebounds right into the slot and fumbling easy shots, and who knows whether he'd have a nerve-wracking win or allow five goals on 17 shots.
 
Copmuters said:
I met Cloutier once outside of Vancouver's airport...

He had man hands


I'm 6'3, so it's not often someone makes me feel small
Click to expand...

If you ever go to Chicago, they've got Doug Wilson's hand prints not too far from the closed down Gino's. I think Doug Wilson could snatch the Moon right out of the sky.
 
Cloutier was an OK backup who got to be the bad starter for a very good team for a few years.

The WCE-era Canucks were able to outscore his mediocre goaltending during the regular season from 2001-2004, but when the playoffs hit and things got tighter it was a different story.

Just not a good goalie. Cost the team a chance at the Cup in 2003 with an appalling collapse against Minnesota.
 
DL44 said:
He took the brunt of it in 2003 for his meltdown in game 5 (i was unfortunately at that game).... but that 2003 version of the team stopped scoring in the playoffs...

2004 was the best version of the WCE era... and Cloutier was hurt for the playoffs and Bertuzzi suspended.
Click to expand...

In game 7, Clouts made 12 saves and let in 4 goals. Honestly, I think Cloutier down gave the 2004 team a better chance. He was a good regular season goalie. Feasted on the lower tier teams and was what he was against better teams in the playoffs. Should he deserve as much hate as he gets? Probably not, but he was by no means a viable answer in goal to an upper echelon team in the NHL at the time.

Burke's one downfall wherever he has gone is his ineptitude at finding good talent in goal. In Anaheim, he inherited J-S Giguere. To his credit, he got Hiller too. But in his long years of running NHL franchises, he has yet to eclipse Jonas Hiller. That's his one decent goaltending acquisition. And it really showed in his infancy as a GM how much blind faith he put in to little talent in goal.

That center ice goal. I wouldn't say it ruined him at all. It just highlighted to everyone what he was: a mediocre NHL starter at best. What really ruined him were his injuries in the '04 playoffs and the one in '05-06.
 
Cloutier was a decent goalie for a long period in the NHL, shame he's remembered more for that bad goal than anything else.
 
tony d said:
Cloutier was a decent goalie for a long period in the NHL, shame he's remembered more for that bad goal than anything else.
Click to expand...

I suppose "decent" is relative, and if you mean the Josh Hardings and Mark Fitzpatricks of the NHL that get considered for every vacant starting job but never really grab one, I suppose Cloutier is in that echelon.

But he certainly didn't do that for a long time. He got his first crack at starting in Tampa at 23, and his last try in LA at 30. But he was only a full-time starter for 3 consecutive years - inconsistency and injuries saw to that.
 
I wouldn't have wanted him backstopping my team if I wanted to win a Cup, I'll just say that.
 
Yeah, I'd need to hear the definition of "decent" being used. Cloutier's numbers were generally south of league average.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 1 (members: 0, guests: 1)

Latest posts

Ad

Ad

Top Bottom