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Originally Posted by GranteedEV
What AHL quality were Niemi, Crawford, Bishop, Jones, Rinne? All guys to play in or win a recent SCF. BTW Rittich was really good the one year he played in the AHL. Looked NHL-ready that year (I said as much in threads and got laughed off the board by people not watching). I even voted for Rittich as a top ~5 prospect of ours after that season in the polls. He didn't fluke his way to the NHL. He even nearly won a playoff series against a very good AHL team after Gillies lost the first two games. It came down to a game 7 overtime where a career AHL defenseman on our power play coughed up a shorthanded breakaway to win the series. Rittich is a fine goalie
You really don't need star goaltending in the playoffs, you need solid goaltending behind strong team defense. Heck we probably could have won a cup with 2014-15 Hiller-Ramo if we had a bit more skater talent. Ramo wasn't the reason the Ducks beat us. You can't have 2017 Elliott meltdowns but that was an outlier among playoff performances.
You do need stars at center as that position is crucial to team defense (and offense).
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Rittich’s career AHL save percentage is .914, his NHL save percentage is much worse.
Comparing him to goalies like Bishop is just silly. He has played some nice games but there is no data to support he can take a team through the playoffs. None at all, other than hope and speculation.
He almost won an AHL series. And apparently the Flames were close to wining the Cup in 2015 too.