Roster Moves: Per Agent, Mason Likely Moving on From Flyers

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Ghosts Beer

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I look at goalies sort of how I look at placekickers in the NFL.

There are a couple consistently at the top, a few each season who are really bad, and the rest all fall somewhere in between and are largely interchangeable on a season-to-season basis.

It's another position where there are a very limited number of spots in the entire league, and years of training have perfected the technique, leading to a glut of similarly qualified players.
 

The Madrigal

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I look at goalies sort of how I look at placekickers in the NFL.

There are a couple consistently at the top, a few each season who are really bad, and the rest all fall somewhere in between and are largely interchangeable on a season-to-season basis.

It's another position where there are a very limited number of spots in the entire league, and years of training have perfected the technique, leading to a glut of similarly qualified players.

Yes, this all day. Why more people don't understand this is beyond me. It amazes me how many people would be happy with the Flyers goaltending if they bring Mason back, but would be looking for the nearest bridge to jump off of if they get Bernier or Elliott.

I prefer Mason, Bernier, Miller, and Elliott in that order. To be perfectly honest though, I don't care if they do end up with someone like Nilsson or Kinkaid. It's not going to make a huge difference at the end of the day.
 

Ghosts Beer

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It amazes me how many people would be happy with the Flyers goaltending if they bring Mason back, but would be looking for the nearest bridge to jump off of if they get Bernier or Elliott.

I prefer Mason, Bernier, Miller, and Elliott in that order. To be perfectly honest though, I don't care if they do end up with someone like Nilsson or Kinkaid. It's not going to make a huge difference at the end of the day.

Yeah, I don't understand it. I think some people just get really attached to their team's goaltender. Maybe it's the masks, or that it's such an easily-identifiable independent position, or maybe some people grew up playing between the pipes.
 
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Yeah, I don't understand it. I think some people just get really attached to their team's goaltender. Maybe it's the masks, or that it's such an easily-identifiable independent position, or maybe some people grew up playing between the pipes.

yep. I have seen it with pretty much every fanbase. even ours. Mason posts a .918 save percentage and is praised. Yet we have no issue saying so and so sucks or is overrated who has numbers close to that.
then again 90 percent of the league is overrated or sucks according to this board. coaches and GM's included.
 

The Madrigal

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If we get a .918 SV% from our starter I will be quite happy....regardless who it is.

Bernier is .914 for his career despite playing for some flat out horrible teams in Toronto. He was at .915 in 33 starts for Anaheim last years. Yet everyone seems to hate the idea of him. I'm not saying he is great or anything like that but the downgrade from Mason to him is minimal.
 

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Someone already mentioned this I think but Masons highs are higher than Berniers and his lows are about the same.
 

Alchemy

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If we get a .918 SV% from our starter I will be quite happy....regardless who it is.

Agree. I believe you can still win with atleast a top 15 goalie. Elite goalies don't generally win you cups anymore. The last goalies to do so were generational guys(Roy, Hasek, Brodeur) and they had stacked teams as well.
 

Captain Dave Poulin

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Agree. I believe you can still win with atleast a top 15 goalie. Elite goalies don't generally win you cups anymore. The last goalies to do so were generational guys(Roy, Hasek, Brodeur) and they had stacked teams as well.

You are probably right. I am too drowsy to think this all the way through, but the one thing that seems to sink guys these days more than athletic limitations is mental hiccups. That has always, always been a part of it, of course, but if there is a large degree of parity at the position athletically, and I think there may be, the difference seems to be their mentality. Rinne's tragic record in Toilet Town - that is weird, but then the team has been stacked for a while and any team could struggle there (and also get cheated and royally ****ed by the officials, but that's another story). Does he suffer from mental weakness/hiccups? He seems to, at least there if not elsewhere. But how do we measure that against other goaltenders and their mental weakness/propensity for mental hiccups? I think it is definitely a challenge to do that, to measure that. In general, though, I don't think stats give us the whole story - I never think they give you the whole story (and admittedly don't use them), but it is especially true at this position and especially lately.
 

LegionOfDoom91

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You are probably right. I am too drowsy to think this all the way through, but the one thing that seems to sink guys these days more than athletic limitations is mental hiccups. That has always, always been a part of it, of course, but if there is a large degree of parity at the position athletically, and I think there may be, the difference seems to be their mentality. Rinne's tragic record in Toilet Town - that is weird, but then the team has been stacked for a while and any team could struggle there (and also get cheated and royally ****ed by the officials, but that's another story). Does he suffer from mental weakness/hiccups? He seems to, at least there if not elsewhere. But how do we measure that against other goaltenders and their mental weakness/propensity for mental hiccups? I think it is definitely a challenge to do that, to measure that. In general, though, I don't think stats give us the whole story - I never think they give you the whole story (and admittedly don't use them), but it is especially true at this position and especially lately.

05-06 - Miikka Kiprusoff 1st round
06-07 - Martin Brodeur 2nd round
07-08 - Martin Brodeur 1st round
08-09 - Tim Thomas 2nd round
09-10 - Ryan Miller 1st round
10-11 - Tim Thomas Stanley Cup
11-12 - Henrik Lundqvist 3rd round
12-13 - Sergei Bobrovsky 1st round
13-14 - Tuukka Rask 2nd round
14-15 - Carey Price 2nd round
15-16 - Braden Holtby 2nd round
16-17 - Sergei Bobrovsky 1st round

That's every Vezina winner since the lockout & the round their team was knocked out in that year they won it. Only Thomas won a Stanley Cup & a Vezina in the same year since then. Brodeur won cups in the pre-salary cap era. But in terms of winning a cup in any other year during the salary cap era none of them have done so sans Thomas that one year he won both.
 

The Madrigal

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05-06 - Miikka Kiprusoff 1st round
06-07 - Martin Brodeur 2nd round
07-08 - Martin Brodeur 1st round
08-09 - Tim Thomas 2nd round
09-10 - Ryan Miller 1st round
10-11 - Tim Thomas Stanley Cup
11-12 - Henrik Lundqvist 3rd round
12-13 - Sergei Bobrovsky 1st round
13-14 - Tuukka Rask 2nd round
14-15 - Carey Price 2nd round
15-16 - Braden Holtby 2nd round
16-17 - Sergei Bobrovsky 1st round

That's every Vezina winner since the lockout & the round their team was knocked out in that year they won it. Only Thomas won a Stanley Cup & a Vezina in the same year since then. Brodeur won cups in the pre-salary cap era but none of them won a cup in any other year in the salary cap era sans Thomas.
The Flyers made it to the cup finals with Michael Leighton and Brian Boucher. Just this year the Senators were an overtime goal away from being in the Stanley cup finals behind a hot Craig Anderson who carried them to that point. Team defense and/or a goalie getting hot is what typically wins cups in today's NHL, not dominating goalies. I would say Jonathan Quick is the only example in recent history of a goalie carrying a team to a cup win. Guys like Henrick Lundqvist and Carey Price haven't ever won a cup and Price hasn't even made it to a cup final. People make far too big a deal out of goalies.
 

LegionOfDoom91

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Well I think there's a happy medium. I don't think you can throw bums out there like the Flyers did & expect good results in the end. But elite goalies are counterintuitive in today's cap era. The team in front of them & the system ran has more effect on a goalie than their actual ability. You can be a guy as good as Price but it doesn't matter too much with what's infront of him there in Montreal. It's going to get worse too when he signs a new deal & costs have to be cut elsewhere. You can win with second tier guys which I would say Anderson is in there along with 10-15 or so other guys. You can save money on guys like that to allocate it for the guys infront of them & they can still do their part potentially in bailing you out on some nights it's just not there.
 
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Captain Dave Poulin

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What you guys are saying is true and is good information, but what I was getting at is this. Even if the position matters less than people think or talk about, we still want the best goaltender we can get back there, of course. Then we take in the ideas that 1) the position isn't as critical as it used to be, and 2) we are living in a salary cap world. So how do we get the best bang for our buck? And ultimately, how do we (as fans without insider knowledge of workouts, mentality, etc.) evaluate who is the best fit for us? I think it is difficult. The good thing is that we can find someone competent, and the other good thing is that we don't necessarily need more than that. But what's our very best option? I think that's what Hexy is thinking of (unless he is punting the season for a lottery pick in a good draft, which I don't believe for a second for a lot of reasons). I like Mrazek's athleticism - when I have seen him, he seems to play fast and think fast. One of the things that bugs me about Mason is that IMO he is relatively slow to recover from scrambles and relatively slow going post to post (this is a very, very amateur analysis obviously, and I'm not trying to start a fight lol). I think Mrazek is faster and I personally like that. I haven't seen him a ton or anything and I'm not trying to pretend that I have - it's just that when I have watched him, he has been good.
 

The Madrigal

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Well I think there's a happy medium. I don't think you can throw bums out there like the Flyers did & expect good results in the end. But elite goalies are counterintuitive in today's cap era. The team in front of them & the system ran has more effect on a goalie than their actual ability. You can be a guy as good as Price but it doesn't matter too much with what's infront of him there in Montreal. It's going to get worse too when he signs a new deal & costs have to be cut elsewhere. You can win with second tier guys which I would say Anderson is in there along with 10-15 or so other guys. You can save money on guys like that to allocate it for the guys infront of them & they can still do their part potentially in bailing you out on some nights it's just not there.
Obviously there is a happy medium and it doesn't hurt to have an elite goalie. The idea though that the better the goalie you have the better chance of winning a cup isn't an exact science. If that were the case Lundqvist and Price would each have multiple cups instead of zero between the two of them.

I just think most people put way too much focus into goalies and not enough into team defense and scoring. You can have the greatest goalie in the world but if your team defense isn't good and your team doesn't score a lot of goals you aren't winning a cup.

There is also a tremendous amount of luck involved in a successful cup run but that's a whole different topic of conversation.
 

The Madrigal

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What you guys are saying is true and is good information, but what I was getting at is this. Even if the position matters less than people think or talk about, we still want the best goaltender we can get back there, of course. Then we take in the ideas that 1) the position isn't as critical as it used to be, and 2) we are living in a salary cap world. So how do we get the best bang for our buck? And ultimately, how do we (as fans without insider knowledge of workouts, mentality, etc.) evaluate who is the best fit for us? I think it is difficult. The good thing is that we can find someone competent, and the other good thing is that we don't necessarily need more than that. But what's our very best option? I think that's what Hexy is thinking of (unless he is punting the season for a lottery pick in a good draft, which I don't believe for a second for a lot of reasons). I like Mrazek's athleticism - when I have seen him, he seems to play fast and think fast. One of the things that bugs me about Mason is that IMO he is relatively slow to recover from scrambles and relatively slow going post to post (this is a very, very amateur analysis obviously, and I'm not trying to start a fight lol). I think Mrazek is faster and I personally like that. I haven't seen him a ton or anything and I'm not trying to pretend that I have - it's just that when I have watched him, he has been good.
Paragraphs dude, that is hard to read ;)

I was interested in Mrazek a couple of weeks ago too. That being said, the fact that he had such a horrible season, was exposed in the expansion draft, and then taken leads me to believe there is something wrong with this dude. Whether it's the alleged attitude problems, and/or more to his play last season than just a bad year, I don't know. Something isn't right though and I am not giving up assets for someone like that.
 

mja

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Strip the C from Fraud Gir-who

It's not enough to strip him of the C. He must be removed from the team. Also, anyone who has been on the team more than 3 years also needs to be removed from the team, because they're obviously no good either. Hopefully, we'll be able to get some mid rounds picks out of it.

I mean, just look at Detroit and how successful they were after they traded Steve Yzerman when he just couldn't get the job done through 12 seasons, and he didn't have near the support that Giroux has.
 

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