I don't give a damn if MAF is the greatest guy ever off the ice or a total jerk. He is ridiculously overrated as a hockey player, that's why all the praise he gets is annoying. If you want to give him the nicest guy ever award, go right ahead but he is a mediocre starter with great longevity that the media insist on portraying as a top goalie because he is nice. It's silly to the point of childishness,
8 seasons .912+ behind a lot of bad defenses, while barely missing games. 5 seasons over .915
Probably the best shootout goalie in the league, at a time where a lot of them were played. He played 82 of those for us. Went .740. He was stopping 3 of 4.
Yeah, he wasn't elite. But having that position pretty stable for so long was valuable too. We never had to worry about missing the playoffs due to goaltending, like some other teams did.
In 2014-15 he saved our necks from a playoff miss under MJ with a .920 reg season, when most of the Forwards were giving career low performances. We got in on game 82.
I find that a lot of fans go to the other extreme, forgetting what he did provide and end up underrating him. His numbers would have been better on structured teams too. We saw him have .927 and .928 seasons for Vegas at ages 33 and 36.
Try to remember what our blue lines and systems looked like while he was here. He had to deal with a lot of run-and-gun, sloppy hockey. A well above average amount of high danger chances relative to shots faced.