I also think a starting goaltender is pretty hard to go out and get. Most of them are drafted and take a while to become the starter. The few that are available just so happen to be because that team drafted two, but we're talking a 4-6 year stretch between when most of those guys get drafted and when they take over the starting role. If Treliving had drafted a grade A goaltending prospect right near the start of his tenure, we might just be seeing him now.
Could we have drafted Demko instead of McDonald in 2014? Sure, but we still wouldn't have a starting goaltender.
Blackwood wasn't an option in 2015, Hart wasn't one in 2016.
So who could we have acquired?
- Bishop we tried, it didn't work out.
- Fleury is a question mark, did we try? I hope so, but he wasn't much better than Rittich this year, if at all.
- Lehner, Varlamov, and Raanta are probably the only three that are better than Rittich where it's not clear how "in" we were. It's not like they were just ours to take, it's a number one goaltender, so you're taking some risk while competing with multiple other GMs.
I don't fault Treliving for not getting a 1G just like I don't fault him for not getting a 1C. Those things aren't just about being a good GM, they take a ton of luck.
I do wish he'd done better on the goaltending front, but I also think getting Rittich for nothing was a huge positive.
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