[IliketoPuck]

This "for what it's worth" from Admiral Plain Vanilla is starting to really grind my gears. Rittich is the starter for this team. He's a top ten goalie statistically in the league.

Wills, for whatever reason, has a love for Mike Smith that is irrational and does not line up with Smith's contributions in the past calendar year. He makes little comments like this all the time on twitter and the radio.

Even this morning, the guys on the Fan were completely embarrassing. Warrener with the hot takes about Flames goal tending not being good enough, despite the fact that the Flames aren't even in the conversation for top spot in the West without Rittich. Completely disingenuous. Then they follow that up with the "well if we'd won, it wouldn't have been about Rittich today." If that's the case, then why are we talking about it at all? How about we talk about the Flames forwards rifling the puck repeatedly into Marktstom's chest instead of picking a corner. Or Monahan firing a puck on a 2 on 1 into the corner (of the boards, not the net).

You know who's #1 in the league this season in goals saved above expectation? Rittich. He has had a couple rough games statistically lately, no question. But with the exception of that Kane goal against SJ, I really don't have any issue with anything else he's let in. Flames as a team have been really bad defensively since before the All Star Break, but it was masked by Johnny scoring 2+ points per game. He's slowed down, and all of a sudden we seem mortal again as a team.

Let's mix in some defensive commitment. Guaranteed it will result in better goal tending.