You can take out the "may be" part. Bad/erratic goaltending infects everything. It's not the only problem, but it absolutely IS a problem.It may be that our awful goaltending is not just in the head of Kochetkov, but also in the heads of our entire team.
I would say it is in their heads. But I’m thinking the goaltending challenges exacerbate the other flaws in our lineup.The loss of this game and a 2-goal lead in the 3rd was a disaster. Thinking of how all the experts (not to mention me and many other fans) considered the Canes moves in the off-season to be so savvy, it seems they've been a complete failure (at least so far). No one is playing well consistently, and some players have been bad to mediocre all season long. It may be that our awful goaltending is not just in the head of Kochetkov, but also in the heads of our entire team.
They have always managed to get by with this current core as a sum of the parts…but the reality is there is no one that can carry this team for long stretches. Fundamentally this team is flawed when it comes to a goalie that can carry this club on its back and they certainly do not have a bonafide stud/star player that can do that. I think Rod pretty much summed it up post game when he said there is not anywhere near enough guys carrying their load…this team in the past has managed to be successful when everyone is going…but not a soul on this team is good enough to carry the load when half or more of your guys are doing squat.I would say it is in their heads. But I’m thinking the goaltending challenges exacerbate the other flaws in our lineup.
Ultimately I think a big part of our issues are we don’t have legit top line forwards. We have a bunch of guys good enough to be 1/3 of a top line but none really good enough and when we put 3 of them together we have basically a second line for any contending team.