Quote:
Originally Posted by Canuck-Hater
There is absolutely no reason to start Hiller. We know what he is and we know he won't be back next season. The Flames should let Ortio run the table and find out what he is. Ortio has earned that because I believe he has outplayed Hiller during this stretch regardless of his record. Also I think the team has more confidence in Ortio. I just can't defend Hartley on this one.
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There are lots of good reasons for the coach to potentially play Hiller down the stretch. I won't go into all of them, because I actually agree that Ortio has slightly outplayed Hiller in the past couple of weeks, so that's a good reason to play Ortio.
However, a good reason not to play Ortio down the stretch is something that comes up when we are talking about all young players in here. There is a big crowd in here that feels the bar for starting our young players at the NHL level should be something like this:
- The player in question simply needs to outplay the lowest common denominator veteran on the team in order to earn their starts. In this situation, Ortio only needs to outplay a very brutal Hiller in order to get a start.
If you are interested in developing a player, the above is absolutely not the standard you need to hold, nor is it the right standard if you want to develop a culture of winning. Being better than Hiller right now, is a very low bar. Rewarding Ortio by simply going out and outplaying Hiller is not the way to push him, or show him what it's going to actually take to be taken seriously by the Flames. Hartley can't let the fact that Hiller is hot garbage right now impact what the teams expectations should be for Ortio, especially considering we are out of the picture and making the playoffs (therefore starting our best roster) isn't priority number one. They are forcing Ortio to actually play well (not something he's done consistently), and actually win, to earn consecutive starts, which I think is the right thing if you are trying to push him, get him to taste reality and make him better. Being better than Hiller right now is no difficult task.
You could argue that we "need to see more" of Ortio cause he's RFA. I don't think we really do, as we are likely already decided on our position for Ortio. We have either already given up (which I doubt) or he's simply going to be re-signed with little difficulty, and there is nothing he could do between now and the end of the year given how bad his season has been that will stop us for looking for other goalie options next year. He could go un-defeated from here on out and the Flames still wouldn't feel comfortable handing him the reigns next year, so it's not like we are on the clock to see what we've got in him. We have all of next year to figure that out.