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The Flames are behind the eight ball to make the playoffs, and if they have any hope it has to come from Markstrom.
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Yeah, Markstrom is a key player so he has to deliver. He's got to get himself back on track, but I almost wonder if he's still battling an injury issue...
Also, at the same time - this team is providing Markstrom absolutely no run support - which could possibly be a bit of a mental strain on our goalies (not just Markstrom). It is interesting to see that his LDS% during 5v5 has remained elite, but takes quite a hit during the PK - significantly below what he's delivered over the past few seasons.
Flames are scoring at 2.69 GF/G, good for 22nd (hey, the bottom third...how familiar). It completely invalidates the data set, but if we pull out the 7-3 and 6-3 laughers against the Senators that were entirely because Matt Murray was total junk - we drop to 2.43, good for 6th last. When the team is providing the 22nd best offensive production in a 31 league team, it's an uphill battle for the goalies right from the get go. We effectively need Markstrom to deliver top-5 goaltending for us to be competitive if the offensive production doesn't improve.
Under Sutter, we're averaging 2.67 GF/G (slightly worse than the full-season average), and allowing 2.83 GA/G which is a more notable improvement on the full-season average (3.00 GA/G)...which I guess is to say, the team just isn't very good and I think almost every piece of data shows that the team just isn't very good, and the players on the team aren't playing very good (Markstrom included).
At the start of the season, with Markstrom it looked like we'd finally solved a problem...but it has become quite murky since. I'm pretty confident he'll bounce back, but I still struggle to find hope with the team as a whole.