Quote:
Originally Posted by Infinit47
It translates into Markstrom giving up like 7 goals more than he should have vs Smith giving up like an additional 2.
5 goal swing in a 5 game series.
If Markstrom matches Smith we are still playing.
Although Smith had a goal called back that should clearly have counted, so there is that.
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Yep, those numbers look about right.
In the end, this series came down to games 2, 4 and 5 with each team having a stinker on the road. So in 3 very competitive games where Markstrom could’ve made a big difference, he was well below average. He gave up quite a few that an elite goaltender, that he’s paid to be by the way, would’ve been able to fight off.
I’ll admit the Flames skaters were outplayed in this series, but it’s not like the team was asking him to be Jake Oettinger here. He just needed to be better than what he was. He gave the Flames league minimum goaltending at a $6M price tag. If he did cost the team league minimum, than at the very least, the Flames could’ve added better skaters around him like the Oilers did for Smith. I mean if it was Zach Hyman playing the for the Flames instead of the Oilers, maybe this series goes the Flames‘ way.
The worst part was probably the energy zap. Like I said earlier, bad goaltending has the ability to zap the strength out of your team and it looked like the Flames felt that they never had a chance to win. In games 4 and 7 with the season teetering vs Dallas, you could see the fight the Flames had. In a similar situation against the Oilers, games 4 and 5, the team looked defeated. Luckily for the Oilers, they already went through this adversity earlier in the season, so they just trucked along even with Smith’s bad goals.