Quote:
Originally Posted by DeluxeMoustache
Haha , testy?
Goddamned right, you are free to appeal to authority. As you did with Gulutzan who was an awful coach.
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Appeal to authority is not a fallacy unless the authority is irrelevant to the question. The best practices of generations of coaches in the NHL and at every level of professional hockey are highly relevant to this question, and an appeal to their authority is not, as such, fallacious. Your own personal opinion carries no such relevance, and given the choice between the two of them, I know which one I would rather go with.
Since it became normal for teams to carry backup goalies and give them starts – that is, roughly since the 1967 expansion, when the season simply became too long for one goalie to start every single game as Glenn Hall used to do – the vast majority of coaches have managed their goalies’ workloads to give some starts to the backups and some rest days to the starters.
Your quote from the ‘Brodeur is a fraud’ website is of no relevance, since the data were self-selected: that is, the same professional coaches who are responsible for managing their starters' workload decided that those particular starters were fit to play in that number of games. Moreover, the data are for regular-season games only, whereas fatigue is generally said to become a significant factor in the playoffs. A goalie in top condition can often play 70 or 75 games in a season – but if he has played them all in the regular season, the wear and tear on his body will be such that he will not be at his best in the postseason. Ex hypothesi, one would not even expect to see a dip in performance before the regular season ends.
Incidentally, a website called ‘Brodeur is a fraud’, when it publishes an article intended to show that there was nothing special about Brodeur's endurance, can hardly be regarded as an unbiased source. The entire blog existed so one particular blogger could grind his axe. The argument is half-baked, because the author was far too eager to yank it out of the oven and fling it in Martin Brodeur's face.