Quote:
Originally Posted by Classic_Sniper
I don’t buy into the Markstrom being tired theory one bit. Look at game 7 vs Dallas for instance, 6 grueling games prior and yet both Markstrom and Oettinger were performing at a high level. A few days off and then Markstrom goes up against the Oilers in game 1 where he was at his absolute worst playing easily the worst game of his entire playoffs.
I think the answer is simply, he stinks against the Oilers. He’s been bad against them for 2 years now and they probably get amped up to play him so they can exploit his weaknesses. The amount of soft goals he gave up in just one 5 game series may be more than all the weak goals he gave up in the entire 21-22 regular season combined.
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How do you feel in the days after a massive/major event in your life? Most people have a 'hangover' for a day or two after. Tightly contested 7 game series culminating in an especially tight 75 minute tilt in game 7, with 15 minutes of sudden death.
1 extra day off before round 2. Even the highest workload goalies played about 7 games for each game off (ie. 70ish starts), and those 7 games would rarely come in 13 nights. Most years there is an extra off day or two mixed into each series.
Part of this is a failure to wrap up series 1 in less than 7, which would come closer to simulating a regular season flow.
Smith had 1 extra day rest between rounds and was still garbage...but playing only 6 minutes in game 1 effectively gave him 2 more days.
Ultimately these are all just excuses, but I think it's fair to say he wasn't handled optimally for success, especially given his career history in terms of workload