Quote:
Originally Posted by Textcritic
You make it sound as though Smith is turning in an historic performance. Yes, he has been very good, as good goalies playing for good teams tend to be. However, it bears pointing out that he currently barely cracks the top-ten of save-percentage leaders among goalies who have started more than 10 games, and he ranks sixth in wins in this group.
Moreover, some added context: In the first month of the season Smith recorded a 0.927 SP, and a 5-5 record to go with it. In the last month his SP dropped to 0.916, but maintained a pretty stellar 6-3-1 record in November.
That does not look like a goalie stealing games hand-over-fist to keep his team above water. Those numbers suggest much more obviously a goalie who turned in a series of excellent performances while his team adjusted to the new season, but who has settled back as the rest of the group has improved.
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I agree with the general position you expressed earlier in this post, but i do think you are underplaying Smith's exceptional play early on. He was routinely shelled with over shots a game and that 5-5 and record could easily have been much worse.