GDT: Mambo Sauce vs. Chowder

[Hivemind]

As an aside, the Caps have lost their mojo drafting goalies. It's been bleak since they moved on from Sammy and Vanecek.

Have they lost their mojo at drafting goalies? Or have they lost their mojo at developing the goalies they've drafted? The two are obviously linked heavily, and it's hard to isolate them entirely. But I feel the latter (development) is at least as big a part of their goalie pipeline slowdown as the drafting. The Dave Prior and Mitch Korn regimes were excellent at developing goalies. It's been since Korn left that things have taken a sharp turn for the worse.

 

[Kazer]

Re; Shepard in the AHL

AHL goalies always split starts thanks to the nature of the AHL scheduling loading up games on Friday/Saturday/Sunday. Having a Martin Jones or whoever else in the AHL would still lead to Stevenson splitting starts. There's maybe 1 goalie per season in the AHL who hits 50 starts.

This is a very good point. I would revise my prior post to say that Stevenson would be more of a clear starter rather than a true 50/50 split.

So, last year was 36 (Stevenson) - 34 (Shepard) - 2 (Gibson). Rather than 50 plus, I would look for something akin to 45 (Stevenson) - 25 (Gibson) - 2 (ECHL fill ins). Stevenson would also be first in line for playoff starts. 45 starts would put Stevenson in line with what other prospect goalies played last year (Knight, Blomqvist, Wallstedt, and Askarov all played around 44-45 games last year).

It's also much harder to hit 50+ games played now that the AHL season is 72 games rather than 80 like it was when Cassivi hit 61 GP in 05-06.