This situation has happened many time in sports, franchise/starter player goes down due to injury and the team / fanbase freak out. Backup surpasses expectations and goes on to lead the team for the rest of the year. Most recent examples are Colin Kaepernick & Alex Smith. But this also happened with Holtby when he got on his hot streak in the playoffs.
With Kiprusoff ageing and his save percentage sitting at .870 (even though i'll admit he was better last night), this by far isn't the worst thing that could happen to the team right now. Give a young guy a chance, he looked beyond excellent in training camp and looked pretty good last night as well.
That being said I hope Kiprusoff isn't out very long in case Irving doesn't pan out the way i expect him too. But I do believe that if Irving did play the next 6 games he would put up better numbers than Kipp has thus far.
Bottom line is I believe people are over reacting.. give the kid a chance.
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