I know you don't want to discuss the 'goalie crisis' but I think the main worry hear is we will head to another one.
I don't think VTEC is an above average goalie. An improvement over the past shite yes, but he's still an average guy.... And you can clearly see what happens to average goalies if they get to start the games with breakdowns and giveaways. This game was over :12seconds in. We got so many breaks (called back goals, crossbars) and even weathered some PPs and odd man rushes.
What do you think a goalies mind set gets to be when this comes at him for a few games?
They don't have to be ten bell chances (like weird deflections that bounce over the goalie and fortunately got the crossbar (I thought that was going to break mb29 right out of the gate) or giveaways and snipes off the ass.
VTEC was doing a snow angel 5seconds into this game. That's good news?
You guys think Schmid laid an egg the other day? Thank God they sent him down bc if he stuck around another week we'd be wondering why his SV% is in the .700s.
Show me all the heat maps you want. Outside of the Hughes goal they weren't dangerous in this game. Ever. There wasn't any ounce of momentum or second chance shot or deflection or nice set up. Nothing.
Meanwhile our goalies looked at odd play in front of them all night.
How many times tonight did you see a short, clean, completed pass? How many times did you see our transition game? Any forced turnovers that sent us back the other way resulting in a shot?
We could bench Marino for next game but just like on the offsides burns play, there are no forwards in our zone ready to accept a pass with their feet moving... Ever. Unless you count the PP.
Teams are forcing us to dump and chase and we can't do it.
I like this team, and we'll figure it out, but anytime saying we are winning play or 'dominating' in any of the last ten games is full of shit.
We are a different team right now bc they are talking things away.
We aren’t headed to a goalie crisis like last year. We lost Bernier after he played in 10 games.
We lost Wedgewood almost immediately on waivers and only had two young rookies who just turned pro in our minor system available as call-ups.
Blackwood was on the IR for 15 weeks and he played in pain for most of the season.
At one point we had to play Schmid even though he couldn’t handle the job because Daws was also on the IR and Gillies was in COVID protocol.
We actually used a too-injured-to-actually-play Bernier as a back-up goalie a couple of times before he officially went on the IR forever.
We traded for a 34 year old goalie who had just played his first 4 NHL games since 2018 (when he played 1), then injured his ankle and hadn’t played in a month. We didn’t give him a AHL conditioning stint first because of our desperate need for a warm body in our net. This goalie also just retired.
That’s a goalie crisis.
It’s pretty normal for a serviceable tandem goalie to hit a rough patch in a NHL season, particularly in when teams are averaging 3.16 G/GP, 2.94 GAA and .905 SV% (.900 with empty net goals).
Carolina is an elite team who isn’t losing to anyone right now, I did not see this team getting their shit together against them.
Each of the loses have been different and some have been more winnable (or at least more loser pointable) than others. It doesn’t really matter since that’s spilt milk.
Florida actually plays very well but they get poor goaltending we need to take advantage of this time.
Our defense has gotten sloppier when start pressing. It happens. It would be nice if guys would not play like dogshit defensively (the top pair (particularly Siegenthaler), Sharongovich, Wood, McLeod, other too).
Less dumb penalties would be nice.