Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
Dom Luszczyszyn at the Athletic actually has Markstrom ranked 5th in the Vezina race so far. He blames the save pct on an extremely porous defence in front of him. So maybe we’re underrating Markstom and overrating Andersson, Weegar, Hanifin, and Tanev.
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It's not a problem with the top four defencemen, either. It's a problem with the whole team learning a new defensive system and catching on at different speeds. When some players are playing the zone system, some are having brain farts and reverting to the man system, and a few are just lost in the clouds, you get the kind of defence the Flames had in October.
I would not call that defence ‘porous’. I would call it the Decapitated Chicken Defence. Most nights, the team would get hemmed in their own zone and run around with their heads cut off.
That stretch was long enough that it will continue to make the overall defensive stats look worse all season. In October, the team gave up 33 goals in nine games (not counting SO) – 3.67 GA/GP. Since then they have given up 45 in 15 games – 3.00 GA/GP. The league average so far this year is about 3.1, so they've gone from really bad to middle of the pack. But those early losses are still in the books, so the average for the whole season is still pretty bad.
From what I've been able to tell, Markstrom was actually at his best in October, and it was fair to call him the MVP at that time – or perhaps the OVP (Only Valuable Player). He would have saved the team's bacon, but most nights there was no bacon to save. Since then the team has improved dramatically, but he appears to have fallen off a bit.
These next weeks will be the perfect opportunity to see how much of the team's defensive performance was on the skaters and how much was on Markstrom.