[Signing] Flames sign Jacob Markstrom. (6 yrs, $6mil AAV)

[Scroopy Noopers]

Originally Posted by powderjunkie

It's pretty much true in the cap era. IIRC Osgood is the exception...a homegrown DET guy that left and came back.

The logical aspect is that if you have an elite goaltender, you probably aren't letting them walk away

Yeah it’s exactly that. NHL teams rarely trade goalies drafted in the first round and especially goalies showing potential.

It’s rare because teams don’t move those goalies, it has nothing to do with goalies joining new teams as UFA. Or I guess you could say “goalies who get to UFA are typically not great”…

[TheSquatch]

Originally Posted by Squirrel

LOL, remember the good old days when Tre "won the offseason" by outbidding everyone and bringing in Markstrom. Seems forever ago...

Without Markstrom, this is a bubble team.

Don't let the fact that he hasn't been great in this series cloud your judgment about the rest of the team, who also haven't been great in this series.

Markstrom got through the Dallas series against an out-of-this-world performance by Oettinger, and their save percentages were not far apart (both very near .950 if I recall).

Markstrom needs to be better. For sure. But the signing was not a mistake. This club needed a goalie, real bad. And all year we've been saying "Hey this sure feels nice."

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by dino7c

Avalanche are the cup favorite at every reputable sportsbook I know of

Goalie drafted by Minny and currently on his 3rd team

As they should be; COL is up 3-2 and have the easiest path to the final where they are now guaranteed home ice if they make it.

If either TBL or COL makes the final against a different opponent then they are the prohibitive favourite.

TBL vs. COL is pretty close to a tossup; I'd favour TBL if Point is back, coin flip if he isn't.


But the bet really boils down to:
TBL or NYR or STL
vs.
COL or CAR or EDM or CGY

Which I think is pretty much a coin flip...though it's kinda funny that the 3 homegrown teams probably have the 4 best goalies remaining (really the 2 best; Husso/Binnington/Kuemper/Markstrom are pretty darn close at this point overall)

[GranteedEV]

I wish Sutter had kept Markstrom to below 52 eegular season games so he had something left in the tank when the games mattered.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by GranteedEV

I wish Sutter had kept Markstrom to below 52 eegular season games so he had something left in the tank when the games mattered.

I think this would have been a difference maker. IIRC in 2004 Kipper entered the playoffs with only 38 games played.

[SuperMatt18]

Markstrom with an .852 save percentage and -9.63 GSAA according to Natural Stat Trick

I think that GSAA is probably a bit unfair based on some of the chances the flames have up…but any way you slice it he was absolutely terrible in this series.

We don’t beat Dallas without his performance but he might have lost the Flames this series against the Oilers. The team wasn’t at their best but he didn’t help at all

[dino7c]

bad series, they might have missed the playoffs and certainly wouldn't have won the division without Markstrom.

Maybe somebody else can play more games next season...maybe somebody else will need to step up and play well though..not sure .906 is good enough if you want 40 games

[dino7c]

Originally Posted by GranteedEV

I wish Sutter had kept Markstrom to below 52 eegular season games so he had something left in the tank when the games mattered.

where do the Flames end up with .906 goaltending for 30 games is the question...probably not a first round series with Dallas

[GranteedEV]

Originally Posted by dino7c

where do the Flames end up with .906 goaltending for 30 games is the question...probably not a first round series with Dallas

Vladar's point-per-start pace was... higher than Markstrom's. Including wins over high scoring teams like Boston, Colorado, Washington, Toronto, and typically during compressed parts of the schedule.

Markstrom's sv% was padded by shutouts over trash teams like Detroit. His quality start% was only marginally better than Vladar's.

Yes, Markstrom is probably (or at least hopefully) a better goalie than his backup. But he was simply overworked last year. The 2019 Flames had 108 Points with Rittich and BeachBallSmith in net, they would have been fine last year with a more sensible distribution of regular season workload. Don't pretend there were not games where it seemed like Markstrom was only being played against weak teams so he could get that shutout record instead of because he was vital to the win.

If it meant a first round series against... Los Angeles... and better Markstrom performance in an Oilers second round series on the road... it would have been worth it.

[Classic_Sniper]

This will probably sound like bitterness, overreaction, sour grapes, kicking a guy while he's down and maybe it's because this loss is still fresh, but Markstrom is overrated. For me, I didn't even have this guy in my Vezina voting this season.

I though goaltending was kind of an after thought most of this season, regardless of whether it was Vladar or Markstrom, I honestly felt like the team made their goaltender's jobs really easy this season. The majority of the shutouts this season for instance felt like team shutouts. There weren't a ton of steals in my opinion.

I'm probably a pretty hard marker when it comes to goaltending in general, but to me, the best Markstrom I saw was Vancouver Markstrom or 2021 pre-injury Markstrom. That guy legitimately looked like a Hart MVP candidate. Since then, he's been adequate, but not the $6M game breaking goalie that we signed up for and slapped on a NMC to boot.

The Oilers not winning the Markstrom sweepstakes may have actually been a blessing in disguise because without his giant cap hit, they were able to afford a Zach Hyman or an Evander Kane with that cap space and in the end, that depth played a huge part in this series.

Yeah, this post is probably unfair and harsh, so I'll say this to be fair, the team wasn't great either. The Oilers had the major edge in play and deserved to win, but definitely not in 5. Darryl definitely receives blame as well for continually throwing Markstrom out there when he was clearly not in the right mental state. The Oilers were clearly in Markstrom's head based on the last 2 years of head to head match ups against them. Those numbers were beyond ugly and Darryl should've and woud've seen that.

[Classic_Sniper]

Originally Posted by GranteedEV

Vladar's point-per-start pace was... higher than Markstrom's. Including wins over high scoring teams like Boston, Colorado, Washington, Toronto, and typically during compressed parts of the schedule.

Markstrom's sv% was padded by shutouts over trash teams like Detroit. His quality start% was only marginally better than Vladar's.

Yes, Markstrom is probably (or at least hopefully) a better goalie than his backup. But he was simply overworked last year. The 2019 Flames had 108 Points with Rittich and BeachBallSmith in net, they would have been fine last year with a more sensible distribution of regular season workload. Don't pretend there were not games where it seemed like Markstrom was only being played against weak teams so he could get that shutout record instead of because he was vital to the win.

If it meant a first round series against... Los Angeles... and better Markstrom performance in an Oilers second round series on the road... it would have been worth it.

Yeah, Darryl definitely fed Vladar to the wolves this season. I was actually all for Vladar coming in after game 1 or game 2. There was an obvious weakness the Oilers were exploiting and his past performances in BoAs should've made this a tougher decision. I don't know how close Darryl was to playing Vladar, but I don't think this series would be over if he was in net. The Flames lost 3 close games in this series and in at least 2 of them, Markstrom was a major reason why the team didn't come out on top.

[KootenayFlamesFan]

Well if the team deserves credit for Markstrom looking good in the regular season doesn't that mean that it's the team's fault he looked worse in the playoffs?

You can't give him no credit when things are going good but still pile all the blame on him when things aren't going well.

IMO he could have been better, for sure. Game 1 was ugly, and the odd goal here and there the other games weren't good, either. He mixed in some huge saves this series but yes he could have been better. He was fantastic against Dallas, not so much against the Oilers, for whatever reason. In his head, I think. Not sure why.

The defensive play on the other hand? Woof. Screens, deflections, guys like Kylington unable/unwilling to lift a stick on RNH for a game winner..............some really horrible defensive play by the entire team. A 180 from the regular season.

[Classic_Sniper]

Originally Posted by KootenayFlamesFan

Well if the team deserves credit for Markstrom looking good in the regular season doesn't that mean that it's the team's fault he looked worse in the playoffs?

You can't give him no credit when things are going good but still pile all the blame on him when things aren't going well.

IMO he could have been better, for sure. Game 1 was ugly, and the odd goal here and there the other games weren't good, either. He mixed in some huge saves this series but yes he could have been better. He was fantastic against Dallas, not so much against the Oilers, for whatever reason. In his head, I think. Not sure why.

The defensive play on the other hand? Woof. Screens, deflections, guys like Kylington unable/unwilling to lift a stick on RNH for a game winner..............some really horrible defensive play by the entire team. A 180 from the regular season.

Yes, like I said, the team wasn't great and they deserved to lose. But when your goaltender makes $6M, that eats up a lot of cap that could otherwise be used for important depth additions. So there should be an expectation to have the advantage in this department, especially against a $2M, 40 year old Mike Smith.

But in the end, it was Smith who outplayed Markstrom handily, especially in the puck playing department. In terms of value, the Oilers are getting great bang for their buck. Mike Smith isn't exceptional and can give up the odd stinker as well, but that's to be expected. However, when your Vezina candidate goaltender is posting numbers that would be considered bad in the 1980s, that's not good value. It's the opposite actually.

.852 sv% for a playoff series is almost not believable. In the modern era, this could go down as one of the worst goaltending performances of all time.

EDIT: By comparison, Trevor Kidd had a more impressive .856 sv% in 94-95 against the Sharks. Now I was too young to watch the Flames at this point in my life, but I was told by a friend that fans actually threw garbage at him after that series was over. So for Markstrom to somehow reach Trevor Kidd level bad...that's some kind of bad.

[Monahammer]

I would throw garbage at markstrom. That is one of the most embarrassing goalie performances of all time. Good will is completely evaporated. Markstrom is terrible when there's pressure applied externally. Mentally weak. We are potentially ####ed for the next 4 years- this contract will look worse if his mental incapacity is further burdened by this all time poor collapse.

What a disaster.

[Flamesfan05]

Trade him if some team is willing

The Flames have 2 good young goalies coming up

You can’t possibly do worse than Markstrom in this series

Dude is so mentally weak. You could even see it in the regular season during close games but it was covered up by all the shutouts

I am still pissed with his joke of a performance

[Itse]

Originally Posted by SuperMatt18

The team wasn’t at their best but he didn’t help at all

The team was dominating the Oilers until Markström imploded in game 1. They recovered at the end of that game, pretty easily taking back the lead, but after that his perfomance just took the rest of the team with him.

Teams play worse and look worse when they play in front of a bad goalie, this is not a new observation.

Markström let in 1 goal in 6 shots over the series.
Smith allowed 1 goal in 11 shots.

Yet somehow most games were close.

[CliffFletcher]

There’s zero chance Markstrom gets traded. He’s a legit number one (though his Vezina nomination is more a product of the system in front of him than spectacular play on his part).

Sutter has to take a lot of the blame for this fiasco. He overplayed Markstrom in the regular season, and refused to put in Vladar when it was clear Markstrom was tired and the Oilers had his number. As I said in the other thread, you simply don’t see numbers like Markstrom had in this series because coaches always pull goalies playing that bad. Until now.

[bubbsy]

Markstrom had a good season but he isn't a vezina candidate without playing behind a sutter team. As soon as the flames started struggling with their structure, he showed little mental fortitude, or the ability to be a game changer with the ability to steal a game, let alone a series.

[Parallex]

Yeah, Markstrom blew this one for us big time. The top line disappearing after game 1 didn't help either... at least the Breadline picked up their slack.

[Erick Estrada]

At the conclusion of the season I actually feel really good about where the goaltending is right now with Markstrom, Vladar, and Wolf on the horizon. The position hasn't been this stable for the organization for a long time.