Quote:
Originally Posted by The Yen Man
There is no personal vendetta. That's a narrative some keep pushing here that I don't see. People are just fed up with his goaltending and inability to perform at even a competent level in any pressure situations. I'm just tired of all the apologists who jump at the first signs of him performing at an average level, and throw out his wins record repeatedly when it's clear a lot of those wins are because of the team in front of him, not because of his stellar goaltending.
You may think it's tiring to see Flames fans piling on, but it's just as tiring seeing all the chastising of posters legitimately voicing their frustrations on Smith's bad play.
This includes guys like Wills, who even yesterday just refuses to admit Smith played bad and blamed the team for being flat in the third. Guess when they started becoming flat? When Smith let in that momentum sapping crap second goal. And it's not like he does it once in awhile. You can pretty much count on him doing it every other game. It is not a good sign when you come away from any Flames win going, thank goodness we didn't see a Smith special tonight.
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I was thinking back to the Francis interview during intermission a couple of games ago when he was praising Smith's puck-handling skills.
He admitted that one out of 10 times it goes badly, but we dont see all the good the other 9 times.
I have to call BS on that. First of all, 1 out of 10 is a lot of goals to give up and really speaks to Smith's sub-.900 save percentage and if the puck ends up in the back of the net once for every ten times Smith handles the puck, as it seems to be doing lately, that way, waaaaaay too many goals against.
Frankly, I dont think Smith's puckhandling is as much of an amazing advantage as people tend to advocate that it is, in fact, I think many other teams around the league are doing just fine with a goaltender who stays in the net.
Granted, as we saw last night, even being in the net with no traffic or screen all the time in the world and directly behind the puck hasnt been going all that well for Smith either.