Most teams don’t need a great goaltender. In the last decade, middling starters like Corey Crawford, Antti Niemi, Marc-Andre Fleury and Chris Osgood have backstopped their teams to championships. An average goalie getting hot at the right time can do wonders, while an average goalie behind a strong enough team often isn’t required to provide more than basic competence.
That’s not to say great goaltending doesn’t have value; it certainly does. But it’s far more important for a team to avoid bad goaltending than it is to get great goaltending.
The funny thing about the position, though, is how quickly things can change. Take Arizona Coyotes backup Devan Dubnyk as an example. For three straight seasons as a 1A/1B goalie in Edmonton he played 30-plus games while posting save percentages between 0.914 and 0.920 on the season. Last year, he imploded out of the gate, bounced to Nashville where he was wretched and ultimately ended up in the minors.
Goaltending tends to be a game of musical chairs in the offseason, where free agents want to be sure to find a home before the music stops. Th ...
Read Full Article at Bleacher Report - NHL
Article written by Jonathan Willis
Which Unrestricted Free-Agent Goalie Is Best Equipped to Help an NHL Team?
October 15th, 2014 by Jonathan Willis Leave a reply »
Advertisement