What you say makes logical sense, but I’m skeptical that a goalie coach can make an established veteran play materially worse.
Goalie coaches can have influence. Quick had a resurgence in NY. But I don’t see a veteran changing their style and sticking with it if it doesn’t work.
More likely to me is that two 34 year old goalies could underperform all on their own.
Imo, that still makes the case that Rogalski isn’t adding much value. Just not sure how much value he’s actively destroying.
They could underperform all on their own. Allen has underperformed for much of his career anyway, but I still think he’s fine at $1.9 million. The entire cap hit would have sucked for whoever had him.
But the fact that the goalies here continue to underperform (I don’t blame all of them on him, Gillies is shit, Blackwood wasn’t good before the NHL and Vitek seemed to have a mental breakdown last year) and we keep getting new goalies, we keep firing coaches, we gave a complete facelift to the position at the trade deadline, other than the puppets back there that pull the strings.
We haven’t fired him yet. He gets to keep his job, there’s no accountability with him.
And if there was any way to preserve a couple of 34 year old goalies or better navigate them to success in their elder years, I don’t think Rogalski has any ideas how to do it.
And to end this, we fired a much better goalie coach, who got now fewer years than Rogalski has gotten, who Blackwood was actually playing well under, at least at the NHL level. While I really don’t want Melanson back, can’t we fire this guy now?
Having a good goalie coach matters. Rogalski has shown to maybe be a good guy to have on your goalie development team, but not as your main goalie coach.
