Quote:
Originally Posted by DeluxeMoustache
I grant you this but submit they are statistical anomalies. Thomas especially. How is Smith trending?
More likely, Mike Smith is an old guy who is, what, 5 years from his last impact season, played for years for a coach that emphasized team D on a budget team that didn't spend on scorers, and is basically a coin toss on a team that is arguably on the uptick but really not established at being good defensively.
|
Where are people getting this downward trend from? He still played great against the Flames last year and was the Coyotes 3 star winner which is a good barometer of how well he played. He was also their all star game rep.
Just because the Coyotes were terrible doesn't mean Smith is terrible. Same thing with Ryan Miller and the Canucks. I had to watch and listen to a lot of Canuck stuff last year and Miller was amazing but you wouldn't know it from his stats. It's probably the same thing for Smith.
I think people should actually watch these goalies play instead of relying on stats. Of course a backup on a Cup contender is going to have great stats, they play for a great team and usually play against crap teams. Smith and Miller were under seige most nights and had many games where they faced over 40 shots. Just go back and look at the games the Flames played against these two goalies and you will see how good they were.
I'm not going to say that this was the right move because goalies are really unpredictable, they are like pitchers in baseball, but I can see how the Flames research and analysis led them to going with Smith.