Quote:
Originally Posted by Crown Royal
You can't get blood out of a stone. Goaltending coaches aren't around to make bad goalies great, their job is to work with goaltenders and help them make tweaks to improve their game; the goalie needs to have talent to start with.
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Let's not pretend guys like Elliott, Hiller, even Talbot were totally talentless. They've had more success elsewhere than they had as Flames. Chad Johnson was a guy who came in and gave us a couple months of really damn good goaltending, and then fell off the map instead of sustaining it. David Rittich has started consecutive seasons as our best goaltender, and fallen off the map without sustaining it.
About the only goaltender who was better at the end of a season than the beginning since Sigalet got here was Smith in 2018-19 - and Smith was outright awful that year so he had virtually nowhere to go but up.
Am I blaming Sigalet for none of those guys being Patrick Roy?
no.
But you look at what a guy like Mitch Korn has done in different stops - Nashville, then Washington, and now Long Island, and you have to at least admit that some goalie coaches wring the most out of the hand he's dealt.
Good goalie coaches can take a reclamation project like Devan Dubnyk in 2014-15, and actually
help him reach his potential.
The guy the Canucks have is another one who always seems to get the most out of his goalies.
Sigalet is just there. Year after year we end the season being miffed about goaltending, but it's not like those players have never shown a high level for brief periods, particularily coming into the early parts of seasons before they've spent time with Sigalet.
Why can't we question if Sigalet's methods are simply ineffective? It's a broad base of goalies, and none of them had their best seasons with Sigalet, unless they've only ever played for Sigalet.
Organizationally, we've even had talented goalie prospects like Gillies and Parsons completely fall off the map from far higher expectations. Sigalet might not be their direct goalie coach but he has a lot of input in their development.