Quote:
Originally Posted by Erick Estrada
He's received more starts than he's deserved this season. You can argue that Rittich should have got the start yesterday backing on to the Christmas break. I get that they assumed a struggling Blues team would be a good opportunity to start your struggling backup but maybe in hindsight the team goes for the two points rather than try to get Smith going. It's pretty obvious at this point Smith is isn't going to get going as he's struggled for a calendar year now. Probably time to just keep starting Rittich as much as possible and save Smith for back to backs. Smith shouldn't start again until January 2nd in Detroit with Rittich starting the 3rd against Boston and his only other January start should be January 18th against the Wings again with Rittich getting the start the next night against the Oilers.
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Again...Rittich had just started 4 games in 6 days and that was after coming into the 3rd period the game before all of that.
Starting Smith yesterday was the right choice unless you want to kill the #1 guy before the end of January.