News item: Ken Hitchcock gets fired in Columbus less than a year
after being celebrated for getting his team into the playoffs.
News item: Brian Burke executes blockbuster trades in
Toronto.
News item: The Boston Bruins drop nine consecutive games and
fall to 12th in the Eastern Conference.
The common thread that binds the recent big stories?
Somewhere, a goalie lurks in the picture.
In Columbus, Steve Mason is suffering through a sophomore
slump. His slide is not the sole reason for Hitchcock’s
departure but if last year’s Calder Trophy winner had been
able to repeat his 2008-09 heroics, Hitchcock would still be
employed in Ohio.
In Toronto, Burke reached to his past to grab Jean-Sebastien
Giguere in the hopes he can stabilize the Leafs’ woeful net
situation. A one-time Conn Smythe winner, Giguere has been just
average the past couple seasons. The man for whom he was dealt,
Vesa Toskala, has the worst save percentage by far among league
stoppers. At one time, Toskala was viewed as a saviour in southern
Ontario.
In Boston, Tim Thomas has been unable to duplicate his Vezina
Trophy showing. He hasn’t been brutal, but he hasn’t
consistently flashed the fabulous form that helped make Boston a
feel-good story last season.
The point? High-level netminding, so crucial to a
team’s fortunes, is difficult to find but even tougher to
sustain year-over-year. A goalie can make a coach or GM look
brilliant, or he can facilitate a firing. And it’s only the
very rare superstar who is able to consistently stay at the crest
of the position.
Check out some recent history for further proof. Thomas,
Mason and Niklas Backstrom finished 1-2-3 in Vezina voting last
year. We’ve already touched on the fate of the former two;
Backstrom ranks 36th in save percentage this season, just barely
above the .900 mark.
Atlanta has been waiting forever for Kari Lehtonen to prove
he was worthy of a second overall selection; Carey Price, supposed
the be the Next One, is still trying to get back on that
trajectory; each time Philadelphia believed it found a steady
stopper over the past couple decades, turns out it hadn’t;
Marty Turco has at times been among the best goalies in the league,
at others the guy who couldn’t win in the playoffs; the
disparity is even greater for Stanley Cup champ Chris Osgood, an
apparent Hall of Famer during some stretches, a world-class sieve
in others. You get the point.
Why the wild variances? Perhaps the chasm isn’t that
wide after all. The line between what is perceived as good and bad
may in fact be ultra-slim. When a forward makes a mistake,
it’s easily overlooked. When a defenseman makes one,
there’s a chance it could lead to a goal against. When a
goalie commits an error, it’s a red-light special.
As we heard one struggling goalie say, his objective was
simply to make one additional save each game. Consider the math. A
netminder who stops 27 of 30 shots posts a save percentage of .900.
If he allows one more goal, stopping 26 of 30, the SP plummets to
.867. If he makes two extra saves per game, all of a sudden
he’s in Dominik Hasek territory at .933.
The really good ones, such as Martin Brodeur, Evgeni Nabokov
and Henrik Lundqvist are able to make that extra save consistently,
each and every year. They have the mental toughness, confidence,
fitness level and, of course, skill set that set them apart. And
when a GM thinks he has found that, he’d be well-advised to
never, ever let it go.
Jason Kay is the editor in chief of The Hockey News and a
regular contributor to THN.com. His blog appears Fridays.
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