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Although the Stars’ goaltending seemed to get a promising start from the tandem system, the two-starter method has outstayed its welcome and lost its efficacy.
Henrik Lundqvist. Carey Price. Braden Holtby. All goalies who have proven themselves pretty solid in the past, and have also recently suffered some rather ugly losses either firsthand or from the bench after being pulled.
Add Kari Lehtonen and Antti Niemi to the former list. Both Dallas Stars goalies have had that experience thanks to the tandem goalkeeping system that the Stars employ. While most other NHL teams have one starter and a backup, the Stars keep two starters ready to go and switch between at whim, or when the kitchen gets too hot.
This philosophy served the Stars well, at the start, but has of late become counterproductive to the mental aspect of the Stars’ play. In an especially telling and trying stretch of their season, the Stars should put some serious thought into not only recovering their goaltending now, but what they will do to fix it in the future.
Let’s think back to why the Stars went with this unusual system to begin with. Back in the 14-15 season, before the tandem system came to be, the Stars were in a dark place, with Kari Lehtonen in perhaps the darkest of them all. His play was unreliable and he had trouble bouncing back from errors.
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His .903 save percentage that season improved to a .906 last season, after the Stars brought in Antti Niemi for Lehtonen to effectively split the duties of starting with. During the 15-16 stretch, Niemi started 43 games while Lehtonen started in 39 of them. Each had an even 25 wins.
This turn in goaltending for the Stars played no small part in their playoff run. But fastforward to the season at hand, and each goalie has dropped back down to a .902 save percentage with Lehtonen currently leading in minutes played.
We all know the system as it works now: one goalie will play a long stretch of somewhat successful games in which their play is solid, only to be pulled at the moment they crack and despite past successes, seem to fall apart. In the moment, this seems like the only logical thing to do. If a goalie is failing, replace him with the other starter you have on the bench ready and raring to go.
However, this seems to be undermining the other advances the Stars have tried to make this season. Consistency has been a constant struggle, but the Stars have worked hard to try to return to some level of normalcy amidst a barrage of forward injury and defensive turmoil.
The problem is that the Stars have had to focus on the moment too much this season. With the aforementioned injuries and setbacks rolling in daily, the Stars have had to make adjustments to get through the moment roll with the punches. But time-tested and respected goalies- the Lundqvists, the Prices, the Holtbys- seem to know and practice a kind of far-sightedness that the Stars have, well, lost sight of.
The Montreal Canadiens have not had all smooth sailing this season either. On January 12th, they suffered a nuclear meltdown against the Minnesota Wild, losing in an ugly 7-1 decision. What seemed to grip the entire NHL and social media scene about it, though, was that the Canadiens were leaving their starting goalie, Price, to suffer through the barrage of goals without any relief.
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Price later commented that he had wanted to stay in and had told the coaches that, despite the bleak outlook of the game after only 40 minutes. He reasoned that “nobody else has the opportunity to get pulled from the game, so I’d rather just be out there with [my teammates].” And once the Canadiens’ fate was sealed and the loss was final, Price asserted that “it’s a very disappointing result, but it’s over now, so we move on.”
How simple, how profound. Here are two things that the Stars seem to be lacking at the moment that the Canadiens are getting right: the practice of teamwork in the most unidealized of ways, and brushing off defeat for the sake of the next victory.
Braden Holtby recently had a similar experience against the Penguins on January 16th, and was eventually replaced by the backup goalie in the high-scoring 8-7 loss very reminiscent of the Stars’ and Rangers latest tilt, in which Lundqvist was also pulled in their eventual 7-6 defeat.
These two games have even more in common than the starting goaltender getting pulled in the face of a loss. The very next game, both starters were back between the pipes and contributed to triumphant returns to the win column: the Rangers 5-2 over the Leafs, and the Capitals 7-3 over the Blues.
What’s keeping the Dallas Stars from being able to achieve similar results? They’re currently 3-14-4 following a win this season, and when they allow their opponent to score first, they’ve got 4-14-5. These stats spell out one major flaw to me, one that probably lays at the foundation of all the rest: lack of confidence and mental toughness.
And the tandem system is a big part of what’s been holding them back. Remember Carey Price and his request to stay in the losing game with his teammates, the proverbial band that kept playing even as the Titanic sunk? There’s more than just feeble, idealized nobility in that concept.
At least, when it comes to hockey. In experiencing the loss with his team, Price no doubt was able to fully recognize and work through his complicities in the resulting loss and allowed the shouldering of that responsibility to motivate him to follow that up with a 5-4 victory against the Rangers two nights later.
Pulling a goalie and allowing another to finish what he started, good or bad, can have a disastrous effect. No longer is the goalie fully responsible for the game- he can (and in the case of the Stars, knows he will) be bailed out if he should have any sort of misstep.
This is a puzzle for the Stars. Allowing Lehtonen or Niemi, either one, to play out a between-the-pipes breakdown during a game for the sake, of all things, of confidence building is a hard pill to swallow. The Stars need wins at this point in the season, or any hope of playoffs will vanish and leave them with the bitter aftertaste of another wasted season.
So in reality, the Dallas Stars must quickly decide if the present or future is of greater importance to them as a team and as a franchise. While the tandem goalie system may sustain them in bits and pieces in the present, it will not continue to be the strong foundation that Dallas is looking for to support a playoff-ready, Stanley Cup winning team.
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