[Mass_nerder]

I've seen more than a few posters blame our goaltending for losses recently, and it made me wonder whether having "the 2nd best goalie on the ice" is the reason we're losing (hint: it's not).

My criteria is that if the flames scored 3+ goals and lost, it's on the goalie (I feel this is a fair cut-off, as the average goals per game for the NHL this season is 2.93), and if we scored 2 or fewer, it's not on the goalie.

Looking at our calendar, out of our 29 (counting ot losses), we have 25 losses in which we scored 2 or fewer, so that's 86.2% of our losses in which our offense failed to provide enough offense to win, and the loss can't be blamed on our goaltending.

Even if we moved the cut off to 1 or fewer goals (which I think it's unreasonable, considering average goals against is 2.73 goals per game), that's still 16 losses, making up 55.2%.

Now I suppose you could argue that bad goaltending early in games lets the air out of the tires, and team can't get it going after that. That might explain some % of the losses I'm talking about, but certainly not enough to consistently point to our goaltending as the reason for our lack of success.