I posted this in the Canucks thread, but there is lots of talk about Markstrom which belongs here as well.
Kevin Woodley—Canucks beat-reporter for [I]The Athletic, and regular contributor to
In Goal magazine (maybe he is an editor?)—was on Pinder's show this AM:
https://www.sportsnet.ca/960/the-nin...ing-islanders/
His assessment matches pretty closely with what I have seen in the early going: Markstrom covered a lot of warts on the Canucks roster that are being badly exposed now. While he thinks both Demko and Holtby have been quite good, the Canucks defence is an absolute tire-fire that is bleeding high-danger chances, and forcing their goalies into making saves well above what they should be expected to make. The big difference this year is that Markstrom made a lot of those saves in Vancouver, and we saw just what sort of effect this can have in the Flames's last game where they took a full period to start playing.
He also has an interesting bit about Markstrom's new retro-gear, and hints at Rittich's set, which he says looks even better. While I was sure these looked like a set that Markstrom had made for a Canucks retro night, Woodley says that Canucks goalie coach Ian Clark has strict rules prohibiting the use of dark-edged pads and gloves. He also insinuates since Markstrom was so quick to order up a dark set as soon as he was out of the Canucks organization that he probably doesn't buy into the same line of thinking.