I understand all this. However, at the time of signing his contract, he was 5th highest-paid goalie in the league. Even today, he is still 7th. So he would be completely fine if he was paid like an average starting goalie and performed like an average, if fairly inconsistent, starting goalie. The issue is, he is paid like an A-tier goalie and many Blues fans regularly play up the angle like he is.
Even you, in your fairly objective post, couldn't refrain from mentioning he "can elevate his game in the playoffs" as if this was a redeeming feature but stats tell me 2 out of 4 seasons the Blues made the playoffs he was pretty terrible in those.
And I can understand reaching that conclusion if you're looking at just stats.
He was bad in the series versus Vancouver, but I don't know if I blame any player for any team playing poorly given the circumstances of the whole COVID situation and The Bubble. But I agree that he was bad so we're on the same page there.
Colorado was the better team in 2021 even when both teams were healthy. Unfortunately for the Blues, they were far from healthy.
Blues didn't have their leading scorer Perron due to COVID protocol for the entire series, and no Dunn for the entire series due to injury. By game 3 they had no Faulk after a
cheap shot from Kadri in game 2 and no Bortuzzo as well after game 2.
Parayko was playing through a back injury and likely shouldn't have been playing at all. Tarasenko was also playing hurt.
By game 3, this was the Blues' D-pairings:
Krug-an injured Parayko
Scandella-Santini
Mikkola-Reinke
Mikkola had under 40 games of NHL experience, Santini is a career AHL'r, Reinke had played 1 NHL game leading up to that game 3. In game 4, the Blues decided to bring in some more experience by icing 25-NHL-games-Jake-Walman over 1-NHL-game-Mitch-Reinke.
Binnington did not stand a chance and that was clear after game 1 when he stopped 46 of 49 shots and still lost the game. He was superb in that game and had nothing to show for it. By the end of game 2, the series was over. The fact that he didn't give up more than 4 goals in any of those games (especially games 3 and 4) is surprising given how lopsided the series was/could have been. I don't know if Hasek wins you a single game in that series. The Blues' offense managed to score just 7 goals in those 4 games. The Avs had almost that many goals with just empy netters (6).
So I would say 2 excellent playoff years, 1 bad, and 1 good considering the circumstances.
Having gone over the stats as you have, and having watched each and every game he's ever played for the Blues, I find that if Binnington is overpaid, it is not by a lot at all. Blues fans know what a sub-par goalie looks like, we had one between the pipes for the better part of 20 years up until Binnington came along. Binnington aint one. He's comfortably above average, and elite when he's on.
