In your opinion what's the answer in goal? Is there a young backup you like? Or one of the free agents next year?
I'm not sure who is available, but I'm kind of warm to the Hellebuyck idea, but I doubt they want to get rid of him? I feel like they're gonna try and compete again next year with a new coach.
All I know is that Blackwood cannot be relied upon. The chances of him either being too hurt to consistently stay out on the ice or to perform well if he can stay is on the ice is just really low for me. I'm at the point where I give it a 60% chance that he's never good again. At least not consistently (maybe he'll have a good year or two if he has quite a few years left in the league) and the chances of him doing as a starter I think are higher than 60% that he won't be good again. Yes, that's higher than Cory, who I probably gave a 90% chance of never being good again by about this point in 2019.
We're really in a jam if Blackwood does have a good season next year. And as we've seen with Anton Forsberg in Ottawa, all it takes is one good (And a fluky one too) year and a goalie is getting a 3 year deal. Yes, I know our management doesn't appear to be nearly as f***ed as Ottawa's, but it's a scary situation we're in if he does have a good year because then we won't know if it's just one-off return to his pre-injury/covid/Melanson days or if he's fixed for good. And no matter how good he is next year, he'd probably need to have at least a Vezina finalist season to justify getting a raise from this deal, with how badly the first two years went.
One goalie that I think I wouldn't mind here, if not for what happened this year is Robin Lehner. I think he only has 2 years left on his deal.
But what happened this year was he was in and out of the lineup with injuries. He was injured so badly that Vegas was bringing Marc-Andre Fleury back at the trade deadline, then he wasn't. Then his kneecap is broken, but he says it isn't. Then he's out long term again, but then he's back 2 weeks later, then he sits out another week again and he's back. Then it comes out he's done for the season, DeBoer says he's not. Then it comes out that he didn't like DeBoer criticizing his play while he was playing injured and he requested to be shut down.
He still performed dead league average with all those injuries. I think Vegas would love to get rid of him and maybe sign Husso or something and roll the dice with a Husso/Thompson tandem for next year. We see how quickly they move guys in and out.
But Lehner is really too good of a candidate to find his way to the glue factory with Crawford and Bernier or constantly sitting in the waiting room at the doctors offices with Blackwood and Bernier.
