Quote:
Originally Posted by KootenayFlamesFan
Well if the team deserves credit for Markstrom looking good in the regular season doesn't that mean that it's the team's fault he looked worse in the playoffs?
You can't give him no credit when things are going good but still pile all the blame on him when things aren't going well.
IMO he could have been better, for sure. Game 1 was ugly, and the odd goal here and there the other games weren't good, either. He mixed in some huge saves this series but yes he could have been better. He was fantastic against Dallas, not so much against the Oilers, for whatever reason. In his head, I think. Not sure why.
The defensive play on the other hand? Woof. Screens, deflections, guys like Kylington unable/unwilling to lift a stick on RNH for a game winner..............some really horrible defensive play by the entire team. A 180 from the regular season.
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Yes, like I said, the team wasn't great and they deserved to lose. But when your goaltender makes $6M, that eats up a lot of cap that could otherwise be used for important depth additions. So there should be an expectation to have the advantage in this department, especially against a $2M, 40 year old Mike Smith.
But in the end, it was Smith who outplayed Markstrom handily, especially in the puck playing department. In terms of value, the Oilers are getting great bang for their buck. Mike Smith isn't exceptional and can give up the odd stinker as well, but that's to be expected. However, when your Vezina candidate goaltender is posting numbers that would be considered bad in the 1980s, that's not good value. It's the opposite actually.
.852 sv% for a playoff series is almost not believable. In the modern era, this could go down as one of the worst goaltending performances of all time.
EDIT: By comparison, Trevor Kidd had a more impressive .856 sv% in 94-95 against the Sharks. Now I was too young to watch the Flames at this point in my life, but I was told by a friend that fans actually threw garbage at him after that series was over. So for Markstrom to somehow reach Trevor Kidd level bad...that's some kind of bad.