During a furious, unrelenting push for a playoff spot, sometimes coaches are forced to ride their No. 1 goaltender all the way to the finish line. With points at a premium and/or a less than reliable backup, it's difficult to find rest for the starter.
While that's a perfectly acceptable blueprint for reaching the postseason, it's generally not a recipe for playoff success.
Meet Devan Dubnyk of the Minnesota Wild, Braden Holtby of the Washington Capitals and Pekka Rinne of the Nashville Predators.
They are three excellent goaltenders having seasons worthy of Hart Trophy or Vezina Trophy consideration. The other thing they have in common is they have all been ridden extremely hard down the stretch, so hard that if they were horses and their coaches were jockeys they'd be receiving strongly worded letters from ASPCA in the coming days.
What can we learn, if anything, from the recent past about what a goaltender's workload near the end of the season means for the postseason? Because I have nothing better to do, I looked through the numbers for the past five regular seasons and postseasons to see if a heavy/light/mediu ...
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Article written by Dave Lozo
Breaking Down What a Heavy Workload Means for Goalies in Stanley Cup Playoffs
April 14th, 2015 by Dave Lozo Leave a reply »
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