Quote:
Originally Posted by Gaskal
I thought Rittich was okay. But I am betting he really wanted that Burns one back in particular, likely the Jumbo Joe one too. The Flames were not good defensively at times though, the 2nd pairing struggled in particular.
It's okay though, you can't expect him to have 100% quality starts. 60ish% is a very respectable number still.
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Yeah, even perennial Vezina contenders like Gibson, Rinne, Vasilevskiy, etc. rarely exceed .650 quality starts over a season. Rittich is at .700 right now, so signs point to him having a few more statistical weaker games by the end of the season. It's inevitable, and it's good that it happens while he still plays really well, like he did against vancouver, and/or the team still wins, like last night.
Even last night, i thought he played a decent game. He made some big saves and let in some strange ones where all the skaters seemed to be asleep. That burns shot even looked like it curved, like a nice soccer shot. I agree that the 2nd pairing had a rough night. On the whole, it was a really nice team win from the flames. Contributions from everybody and full marks for the 8 goals they put up on the division challengers.