Quote:
Originally Posted by Flames Fan, Ph.D.
Not trying to be brash, but so what?
He won't help us get into the playoffs. He's not going to become the long term starter. It doesn't make the Flames substantially better in the short or the long term. He really just takes away time that we can use to assess the other goalies.
And I don't buy the "hurting their confidence" angle. Given the ages of the goalies in question*, we don't have 3-4 years to commit to all of them to ease them into the league. Let's see who can handle the pressure and who can't.
* I'm only referring to Berra, Ramo, Taylor, Brust. I've no intention of having Gillies and Brossoit get tossed into this.
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Inconsistent/poor goaltending can deflate a whole team. Feaster has made it clear the Flames don't want to promote a losing environment during the rebuild and it doesn't make sense to create an easily avoidable disaster that will chase casual fans from buying tickets. The learning curve for new NHL goalies is steep even for most guys that turn out well. Even though these guys have had success in other leagues, I think throwing them both to the wolves would turn out poorly in the short term most of he time without benefiting them in the long term. There's also plenty of AHL starts to be had while they both adjust to culture shock and a different style/level of hockey.
I really think you need a cheaper guy with experience like Macdonald or an up and comer like Bernier to be with Ramo in the NHL if Kipper is gone. If it's the middle of the season and you run into the best case scenario with Ramo doing well in the NHL and Berra doing well in the AHL then you just trade or waive MacDonald and bring Berra up. It's much easier to do that then to have to scramble to find a MacDonald mid season and demote two guys down the food chain.
As a side note, though he didn't quite knock everyone's socks off quite enough on the big club enough this year, I'm still a tad intrigued by Taylor's potential. If the Heat are done early I wouldn't mind seeing him getting a couple more starts on the Flames even if only to look for a miracle shutout or something before we let him slip thriugh our fingers. He'll probably be trying to sign a two-way NHL contract to get a better crack at the NHL next year and it seems a little crowded here on the Flames.