Quote:
Originally Posted by Mathgod
Not interested in a long form debate. I'll just say, from over 20 years of watching hockey, from what I've seen, I can confidently say that rested goalies tend to perform better in the playoffs than those that have had to endure heavy workloads during the season. Of course anyone can cherrypick examples of goalies that have had huge workloads and still played well in the playoffs. But again, from the totality of what I've seen, I'm convinced that fatigue becomes a factor for goaltenders, as it does for players at other positions as well. Of course other factors come into play as well, such as age, conditioning, nutrition, etc. Some athletes have better endurance than others.
Comparing '04 Kipper vs Detroit vs '07 Kipper vs Detroit... he was more dominant in '04. Besides, Kipper never played past the first round after '04... he likely would have started wearing down if the team made a deep run in the playoffs.
Brodeur played on dominant defensive teams that stifled their opponents with their suffocating trap system, making life realtively easy on the goaltender.
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Respectfully, I admire your confidence in your observations and would love to see it backed up by evidence
(You have visibility in to players’ nutrition? Cool, please share :-) Flames should share Johnny’s diet as he was their best player)
I didn’t cherry pick Brodeur and Kipper, whatever that means. They played roughly the same number of games in the regular season as Markstrom played in the regular season plus playoffs and didn’t hit a wall or fall off a cliff
They are among few goalies with high workloads, and happened to have no drop off
To be quite honest, the style of play for skaters, the intensity ratchets up and guys get hurt. But goalies I would submit are generally not affected as much by the increase in hitting and intensity of battles as skaters.
There are relatively few goaltenders that get that high workload. But it generally corresponds to a large gap between level of #1 and backup.
If you say that you have watched hockey for 20 years and feel something is true, feel free to back it up. I would be interested