Quote:
Originally Posted by Textcritic
I am not convinced. From where I sit both goalies are still competing for the starter's net, and will be all season. It is still a platoon situation in which the coach will continue to ride the hot hand.
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People seem to want to have a clarified starter. I don't get the appetite for it perosnally. There are only 30 nets. It stands to reason that you could have 60 goalkeepers in the world that are all relatively equal in skill-set. I don't see whats wrong with having equal trust in 2 goaltenders. Players have bad games or bad stretches, no matter how good they are. Isn't it good to be able to have someone step in who isn't demonstratively worse? To me, that's exactly what's happened here. We had a goalie with bonafide starter numbers who looked human behind one of the worst starts in the NHL. Confidence shaken, he started to look bad, so the solid back-up presence was brought in and did very well (as you would hope and expect if you trust in your players). As you would also expect, the goalie who has never seen that much of a workload begins to fatigue and his play slows down, so you swap them and the other guy is well-rested, eager to prove himself, and looking forward to playing. This isn't the 80's anymore where the back up sat on the bench and took shots in warm-up for 82 games. Goaltending is becoming more of a tandem game IMO, and why wouldn't it? Even guys like Price and Lundqvuist need their rest.
In the absence of one of the top 3-5 goalies in the world, I don't see why you wouldn't just take the hot-hand approach all the time.