Part of it has to do with seeing if Blackwood can still salvage himself and if he can somehow steal the position. The goaltending position has to rhyme and reason to it, we saw Cam Ward win a Stanley Cup out of nowhere. Jordan Binnington went from AHL to playing in a game 7 in the Blues run. Jonathan Quick went from being a .930 goalie to a .910 goalie and proceeded to win the Cup both years. It's been said ad naseum that the Devils probably need to make in the near future for a goalie to complete this roster moving forward. Blackwood is probably my most hated Devil in the last decade, maybe ever, but if the guy decided to go on a tear and become the #1 goalie he was thought to be at the 2020 covid shutdown time then this time is going to be good as f*** in the future since they won't have to bleed assets in a goalie trade. Now that being said, do I think Blackwood will do that? f*** no, I have way more faith in Schmid being this team's starter in a Cup Final than Blackwood but management loses nothing with seeing where he is at this particular point in time.
That’s the worst thing that could happen, short of getting a cup out of it.
Imagine he has a run to the conference finals and we re-up him 2 more years at $3 million or more for him to play like he has the last 3 years? Then we’re stuck with his stupid ass for 2 more years at least, stuck with Vitek for 2 more years and he probably gets at least another year of f***s ups in that case before we cut bait and bring Schmid up.
Talk about Cam Ward and Jordan Binnington. These guys both got stupid f***in deals for winning those cups.
Maybe not so much Ward, as he was good for a 4 year stretch between 2008 and 2012, but they also kept him around in Carolina for 5-6 years after he started to decline. He got way too much mileage there because of that 2006 cup and was still getting contracts when he was terrible and there until 2018, despite being really bad from 2013 onward. Probably mostly because that 2006 cup and Conn Smythe.
And then you got Binnington at 3 more years after this? Or is it 4? At $6 million because of that cup. And now it looks like Binnington was merely an AHL goalie on a hot streak his rookie year, which is way better than anything he’s done since.
Don’t get me started on Matt Murray next, but it wasn’t the team he won the cups with that gave him that dumb f***in deal. And then Martin Jones after the 2016 cup finals run.
Have to go with the frothing, ranting guy on this.
The team is likely very very done with Blackwood. They made a big deal about him being completely healthy this pre-season. That was supposed to lead to this being a bounce-back season.
Instead he was on the IR from 11/12/22 to 12/18/22 and again 2/26/23 to 3/25/23. He had at least on other minor injury as he got hit in the hand with a puck in January, requiring Schmid to be called up and play a game.
Tonight was his 17th start, and if he doesn’t get 4 more than this season, Blackwood will have the fewest starts of his career.
Even if Blackwood stays healthy for a small stretch of games at the end here, and plays well, that doesn’t actually mean much if he can’t stay healthy for over a month at a time during the regular season.
If Schmid didn’t play really well, we got 18 points from his GP w/ decisions, we could have been closer to a bubble team. Blackwood’s absences are a problem.
“What if Blackwood goes on a sick run to SC Finals?” is a very much a hypothetical I’m not considering a thing until he’s playing (and playing well) in the playoffs.
He’s important depth now because multiple goalie injuries happen to teams in the playoffs. They happened to Pittsburgh (it sunk them vs the NYR) and Colorado (they had four! goalies play in their Cup run) just last season.
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. You know how that went lol.
