Quote:
Originally Posted by sketchyt
He started the year playing hyper aggressive. Got caught in the season opener because of it, got a bit lucky against Nashville... but had varying degrees of success/failure.
I've noticed in the last few games, he's adjusted by playing very, very deep in the crease and not challenging shots too often. It's bizarre that he would feel like this is an appropriate adjustment and that a goalie coach would be ok with it.
He's a big guy and just needs to challenge shots at the top of his crease consistently. More difficult than it sounds, but I'm pretty blown away (in a negative sense) at what he's doing right now.
Smith is not done, he's still hyper athletic and basically all of his issues stem from him making very poor decisions in both strategy and in-game save-by-save decision making.
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I think you have this wrong.
Big goalies can play deeper in their creases, because they cover more net. Small goalies need to challenge more to cut off angles. He has always played deep, and he can do so because he's huge. Hypothetically this should allow him to make better saves on lateral plays while also saving square shots. If he plays aggressive, he's not really improving his percentages on square shots, and also putting himself at a disadvantage for lateral movement plays. I think the adjustment is the correct one, in playing less aggressively.