If there is one argument against this (and history doesn't necessarily mean anything), Blackwood plays the Flyers pretty well overall.
He's 8-1-2 with a .923 SV% and 2 shutouts.
More than fair, as I went and looked it up the other night after a conversation that
@Guttersniped and I were having in one of the threads about how he's barely lost to them and last year was the only one she had remembered and that one and one other where we lost in the shootout in 2021 were the only two I remembered.
That said, color me skeptical that this is the reason we're playing him and not because we're really trying to give him every chance we can to be this team's starter. I've been getting this vibe for the last 9 months, be it right from the MSG crew/production crew, Lindy Ruff, NJDTV (or whatever they call the people who do the online in studio stuff for us) crew that we want Blackwood to be the starter. We want Blackwood to be goalie of the future here and we're not gonna just let the other guy (who just traded for 3 months ago and then proceeded to sign to a deal for 3 years, at a higher salary than Blackwood) come in and audition for that role right out of the gate.
And it's weird, because Blackwood was a solid goalie the first two years, but he wasn't a great goalie. He wasn't so good that he should still be getting preferential treatment after the last two years. He's no legend that's just in his twilight and on the way out (like 2013-2014 Brodeur) He was never anywhere near on the level of Cory Schneider before the decline. But even his advanced metrics have him as just below breaking even those first two years.
I'm already getting a weird 2013-2014 vibe with the goalie stuff, but I doubt it'll go that long, because there's people working here that are absolutely on the hot seat right now, which wasn't the case in 2013-2014.