Quote:
Originally Posted by Bingo
Honestly it's finishing and stopping pucks.
Calgary had an xGA60 last year of 2.29 (3rd), this year it's 2.41 (6th) and scoring up by that margin this year.
Defense isn't falling apart at all.
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The defense has been better than it has any right being, with Tanev and Stone missing chunks of time and no OK.
They get sunk every night when shots that shouldn’t go in, go in.
It’s like the one thing you can’t have as a hockey team - goals are going to happen, breakdowns will occur, but you can’t be giving the other team freebies.
It affects the entire roster in such a profound way.
The defensemen play too conservative, and lose their gaps.
The forwards are too afraid to be caught out of position and thus don’t attack aggressively enough. That makes them easier to defend, and results in less offensive zone time.
Meanwhile, the goalie knows the entire team is playing on eggshells, and puts even more pressure on himself to be perfect.
Problem is, perfection is not so important to goaltending as predictability. A team with predictable goaltending is a good team.
Goals that shouldn’t go in are bad at any time. Goals that are scored on the first shot are devastating. They completely undermine all the work everyone else did to prepare for the game. 30 seconds in, we’re already down - great, now what?
I were Markstrom, I would start every game focused entirely on stopping the first shot. I would repeat it to myself until it happened. “Stop the first shot.”
Once that’s out of the way, stop the next one. Then the next one. Don’t worry about anything else. Stop thinking - just stop the next shot.
Vladar’s numbers are pedestrian. He’s a Karri Ramo/David Rittich level goalie. Nothing wrong with that, but he’s not a future 60-game starter.
He doesn’t give up many leaky goals, and that’s why the team looks so much better with him vs Markstrom. It’s not a question of talent.