Quote:
Originally Posted by Calgary4LIfe
Elliott is a FANTASTIC 1B goalie in my mind. If you don't have a bona fide starter, you try and run a tandem. Have a young up and coming goalie, but afraid he isn't ready for a starter's job? Elliott is perfect in that scenario. Elliott is a guy who proves it every season that he can accumulate wins like nobody's business. He is just inconsistent.
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He's not just inconsistent. He's terribly inconsistent, especially in the playoffs. Which is why no team that hopes to win playoff rounds should sign him.
Here's Elliotts stats for his last 3 starts each time he's been a playoff starter:
2010: 10 goals on 76 shots for a SV& of 868
2012: 8 goals on 60 shots for a SV% of .866
2013: 8 goals in 66 shots for a SV% of .878.
2016: 10 goals in 63 shots for a SV% of .841
2017: 9 goals in 56 shots for a SV% of .839
Unsurprisingly there are several real stinkers in there. Remember this
series winning goal from 2013. Kings only had 16 shots on goal in that game.
(For a reference point, Elliott has played a total of 37 playoff games for a combined SV% of .913. In other words: he's fine until he collapses, at which point he's terrible.)
People keep talking about his last season as if that was different from his usual, but when I look at it I see the same as always. Very solid goaltending until he collapses. Last year it just took longer than usual, but again he couldn't recover once it happened. (In that last series against the Sharks he actually sat for two games while Allen played, but still wasn't any good in his last game).
In other words: If you dream of a long playoff run, you should never take your chances with Elliott. Not even as a backup, because if your starter gets injured Elliott becomes your starter, and your chances of getting a not-terrible game out of him are not much better than 50/50.
In the regular season 50/50 between great and bad games is tolerable, because over a lot of games that evens out. In the playoffs if a goaltender loses the game for you, there might not be enough games left to make up for it.