The reason some of us find the constant shifting on the goaltending obnoxious has nothing to do with thinking it’s been fine or being apologists, it has to do with acknowledging the reality that there is literally nothing that can be done about it (aside from playing Akira more and it’s certainly not a given that that will be a major improvement).
Conversely, the shitty play of the skaters in front of the goalie CAN be fixed, with proper coaching and systems and accountability.
What is the point of incessantly complaining and focusing the majority of your ire on something that can’t be changed vs. the things that can be?
Then the frustration gets ramped up further when people engage in circular reasoning by citing xG as evidence that the team is fine defensively, just completely ignoring that many of us don’t see any particular value to that inconsistent, subjective stat line. Citing it repeatedly is not going to change my mind. It’s a severely flawed number that clearly doesn’t account for the elements that the devils are absolutely worst in - namely the amount of odd man rushes, breakaways, and time and space our defenders give to the opposition.
This isn’t really that hard to visualize if you watch how our HD chances against unfold and give it some thought. xG measures danger primarily by location…the devils may not give up chances in those specific locations any more frequently than most other teams, ok sure perhaps I can grant that xG is capturing that correctly. But if the few times they give up those chances it’s on a breakaway or theres no devil applying pressure anywhere within 10 feet of the shooter, common sense tells you that chance is going to be much more dangerous than a similar one other teams might give up but with defenders applying pressure. To put it another way…team A gives up 4 chances in the slot but with strong defensive pressure on the shooter while team B also gives up 4 chances from the slot but with zero defensive pressure…xG will measure both exactly the same despite the reality that the danger level is actually quite different. And it just so happens that what xG doesn’t account for is exactly the devils biggest weakness.
TLDR; we know the goaltending has not been good, but we also know there’s little that can be done about it. The skaters have also not been good, and that can be made better with proper coaching. Please stop citing xG as proof that the devils D hasn’t been that bad, because it’s not accurately measuring what this team is the worst at.
