Quote:
Originally Posted by DropIt
Does this mean certain posters will finally admit that they have no idea what Jordan Sigalets job entails and will stop blaming him for not succeeding with the parade of average to below average goaltending thats come through town?
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Okay, sure, let's revisit that. I was one of those people blaming Jordan Sigalet. Under his time as goalie coach:
- I didn't like how so many goalies (Jonas Hiller 2014, Chad Johnson 2016, Mike Smith 2017, David Rittich 2017, David Rittich 2018) would start seasons off fresh on an absolute tear, only to "spend extra time" with Sigalet on a lull in the schedule, and then their play would fall off the map for extended periods rather than improving as you would expect it to. Maybe at least one of those guys (Smith) can blame injury, but the rest? They all played their best hockey before Sigalet worked with them... usually after an off-season of working on their game.
- I also didn't like how so many other goalies (Brian Elliott, Mike Smith, Cam Talbot) seemed to give up some of the softest goals in the playoffs at the most opportune times. Elliott pretty much cost us the 2017 playoffs, and
after game 1 I didn't think Smith played all that well either, giving up backbreaking, saveable goals late in games. On one hand maybe that's on them as individuals, but these are guys who had far superior playoff run in past years (Elliott 2016, Smith 2012, Talbot 2017) - their kicks at the can with Calgary were a steep droppff in their established level of postseason play. These were not "team shouldn't have left him out to dry" goals... they were softies... in April. Goalies on teams with well-established goalie coaches usually get softies out of their system by December, January-ish and by April are playing some of their sharpest hockey. Our guys under Sigalet just played their worst hockey down the stretch every year. This even applies to the 2017-18 season where we missed the playoffs - both our goalies just fell off the map down the stretch where they had been excellent early on the same year.
- I didn't like how the same argument on a macro level could be made for some of our goalie prospects... Gillies and Parsons were trending sky-high before entering the organization, and while Sigalet didn't work directly with them, it was his direction that led to them trying to alter their games. He publically stated Parsons needed to play less aggressively to be a pro, and that change has had disasterous results for a guy a lot of us thought was the most talented goalie we've had since 34. Gillies is playing his best hockey as a pro since leaving the organization.. All this said, I would say the Stockton goalie coach(es) take more of the blame in these areas, since they were working more directly. And on the flip side, Rittich played under the same goalie coach as Gillies back in 2016-17 and played excellent, even stealing Gillies' net in the 2017 AHL playoffs, so clearly it was a mixed bag at that level, and tougher to analyze.
- I, and just about everyone else, thought Sigalet was an excellent goalie scout. He identified Parsons. He identified Rittich. He identified Wolf. It was clear that when he's not working with the players directly, he was making a positive impact for the Flames.
So where are we now?
- He is not working directly with Markstrom or Vladar as the goalie coach. LeBarbara is the NHL goalie coach.
- We don't yet know if Markstrom or Vladar fall off the map towards the end of the season or the playoffs
- He is in charge of finding goalies, and it looks like Vladar, Werner, Chechelev, Sergeyev were great finds.
So far, it looks like "promoting" Sigalet out of his role has been a success, becauze he's no longer in the role he was previously criticized for. I'll reserve judgement on LeBarbera, but it does seem Markstrom took less time last season to get his game back up to a strong level, than Elliott did in 2017, Smith did in 2018 or Rittich did in 2019 or 2020.