so if you have a good team you want to roll the dice that the crappy goalie you have will get hot?
tampa just won two cups with elite goaltending and almost a third. sure you can point to keumper and how bad he was but i think that also shows how close they were to losing bc of him.
most teams in the league have average goalies at best, only a handful of teams have the elite guys so just by numbers and odds the teams with average goaltending will win more often, but is it a coincidences that the two best goalies in the league ended up in the final 4 this year? I dont think so, just like it isnt coincidence that henke dragged some pretty bad teams into legit playoff runs.
If someone is going to point to the ~66% of the league that has average goalies and say "see that group won more cups than the ~10% of the league with elite goalies" then I will say that is a matter of statistical probabilities where you are putting 3-5 teams up against the rest of the league. I will take my chances with the elite goalie any day. I dont want to pay the elite goalie an 8 year deal where half of those years are on a downturn, but for his peak years and even into the end of his prime I am fine paying him.
Aside from that, looking at a kid in junior as the replacement for your mid 20s stud and top two goalie league wide in three years is plain stupid. There is always a transitional period for a young goalie to take over a job, and that wouldnt be happening while igor is here in the last year of his sweetheart contract, so then four years from now you would be signing an old vet to play for a year as the starter while garand is backing up for a year and then the next year transitioning to the starter IF everything goes perfect. So now you've thrown a year or two away in the middle of the run you are hoping to make with this young group of kids in their prime bc you dont want to pay a top three goalie a contract and you went with an anti niemi type as your starter hoping he would get hot and not cost your team a playoff win in the prime years of fox, miller, laf, kakko, and others. "Better luck next year boys, let's hope our new Brayden Holtby has a 900sp next playoffs."
How many teams in a competition window have turned to a young goalie and gotten the desired results with a long playoff win right away? Cam Ward? Matt Murray? I will take my chances with igor so long as there is a balance of aav vs term. no Carey Price contract with full term and peak aav. Igor, you get 8 years the aav comes down. You want the big aav then we are doing 5 years on the deal.
