[GranteedEV]

After Smith's injury, here were the starts Rittich had:

AT Boston - I would call this an average start. The Flames were not very good that night, in fact that was one of the few times last year you could say they were dominated. He gave us a chance but faced too many scoring chances and ultimately that was the difference.

AT Nashville - This was actually a really good start and he elevated his play at the end of the game as Nashville made a push. His SV% stat is skewed by the fact that with a multi-goal lead he made a dangerous pass up the middle and got punished for it. It was a rookie mistake, not a faceplant.

VS Florida - SV% bad. Goals against were:
1 - A top scorner snipe from a guy coming directly through the slot. Partially on Rittich for not making a great glove save, but mostly on Giordano and Hamilton for a very loose gap. I would consider this a prime scoring chance.
2 - Vincent Trochek with a back door tap-in (!) on the rush (!) on the PK (!). 90% on Gio and Hamonic for allowing this breakaway, 10% on whoever took a penalty.
3 - A Perfect Power Play Deflection
4 - Barkov one-on-one with Rittich. Absolute breakdown. Gio had one rough game.

I'm willing to park this one and say that it's a SV% killer game, not a poorly goaltended one.

VS Boston - Rittich was our best player. SV% was .906 (league average was .908) but that's misleading because Rittich was arguably the prime reason we got to overtime, where Marchand had a breakaway GWG. I still think this is the best game I've seen Rittich play in a Flames jersey.

AT Vegas - Rittich was bad. This is the first game you could call a "faceplant" of any sort and I can tell you every goalie in the NHL has a game like this once in a while. The fact that Vegas had one of the highest SH% in the NHL last year probably contributed too as they were a confident team that picked corners on guys all year.

AT Colorado - Bad SV% but Rittich was our best in the first half of the game or we would have been down multiple goals, instead he put us up 2-0 at one point, but Flames kept taking bad, undisciplined penalties all night, highlighted one where...

1 - Nathan MacKinnon scores a perfectly placed PP goal, stick side, from his off-wing. Not much chance on it if any there. This goal was on Tkachuk for the terrible penalty.
2 - Zadorov wires a puck about 18-20" on Rittich, glove side. In terms of angle it was a stoppable shot, but it was perfectly placed as all butterfly goalies struggle with shots in that zone (above the pads, below the glove)
3 - Back door tap-in on the rush. Absolute breakdown on the backcheck, 100% on the skaters. Hasek isn't stopping this.
4 - A perfectly re-directed centering sauce pass on the rush that lifts off the ground. Rittich would have had to make a perfect save moving laterally to stop this, and I don't expect anyone to save it.

So one "stoppable" perfectly placed shot and three he had no chance on. Made a ton of great saves to give the team a chance. This was not a goaltending faceplant, it was a team meltdown.

And then he had two more starts before Smith came back from Injury, both of which he posted a .960+ SV%.

Rittich did not faceplant. It was a small sample size of games (eight starts) in which the team played some of its worst defensive hockey of the season in front of him. He had one start where he cost the team a win and the rest of his starts were the kind where if an established bigname "starter" were in net people would only be talking about the team's play, not the starter's play.

Rittich's eight starts with Smith injured would be a marked improvement over Smith's twelve starts this season. But one guy has an arbitrarily-decided "starter" label and continues to get chance after chance at the hope he can re-discover his game, as if only "backups" couldn't do the same if they "faceplant".