• Moderators, please send me a PM if you are unable to access mod permissions. Thanks, Habsy.

One or two excuses & probably quite limited! The "ah fuck, here we go again" playoff thread

Pwner said:
The problem with Woll is he is kind of injury-prone. Everytime he goes on a heater, he seems to get injured and that throws off his game.
Click to expand...

well, he did admit that he modelled his game after Carey Price (while responding to a Max Domi comparison)...

hopefully, he won't get injured as often. It's a hard style of play that requires incredible flexibility (which Carey Price never had, at least not to the extent of someone like Marc Andre Fleury)
 
Preston said:
We've seen too many goalies with strong/average consistent 300+ game samples flop in the playoffs. If anything, being somewhat of an unknown could be seen as an advantage. Just roll with it and enjoy the ride. There are no guarantees. Hellebyuck, Vasi... So much volatility playoff by playoff in all these high ticket goalies.
Click to expand...

Antti Niemi was a nobody when he won with the Hawks....
 
Preston said:
We've seen too many goalies with strong/average consistent 300+ game samples flop in the playoffs. If anything, being somewhat of an unknown could be seen as an advantage. Just roll with it and enjoy the ride. There are no guarantees. Hellebyuck, Vasi... So much volatility playoff by playoff in all these high ticket goalies.
Click to expand...

I keep seeing people make this argument and I don't think it lines up with history very well. Basically, I don't think the volatility works at both ends of the spectrum. Yeah, we seen top 5-10 goalies struggle, but we don't see bottom end/bad goalies go on runs that last more than a round or so often at all. If we just take a quick look at the goalies who have made the cup finals over the last bunch of years:

2023: Bob & Adin Hill
- Bob had a decline after retiring to Florida, but dude was a Vezina winner. No one should be surprised that he could run hot for 6 weeks. Hill I went over recently. Good 1B goalie who was maybe a 1A that kept getting stuck behind better or more veteran goalies. Pretty consistent ~.915 kind of guy across the AHL and NHL for a bunch of years in a row leading up to his run. Not a top 10 goalie by any stretch, but an average or better pro. Probably one of the weirdest goalie heaters we've seen in the last bunch of years.

2022: Kuemper & Vasilevsky
- Kuemper wasn't very good but had been a top goalie coming off of a .921 regular season. He was caretaker good and probably better than his raw SV% suggested (56% QS in the playoffs). Vasilevsky is one of the best money goalies we've had over the last 10-20 yrs.

2021: Vasilevsky & Price
- Price was on his last leg, but still capable in short bursts of being elite Price.

2020: Vasilevsky & Khudobin
- We could call Khudobin a weirdo run, but .917 over 25 games from a guy who had multiple elite seasons as a 1B on his track record probably isn't weird. Career .916%.

2019: Rask & Binnington
- One of the best goalies of our era, vs probably the modern poster child for a weirdo heater.

2018: MAF vs Holtby
- two veteran star goaltenders. No one should be surprised by either going on a finals run

2017: MAF/Murray vs Rinne/Saros
- Two of the biggest star goalies in the world backed up by two of the top goaltending prospects in the world. Murray was a star before his body broke down.

2016: MAF/Murray vs Jones
- This isn't our verstion of Martin Jones. This version was a very good goalie prospect who stepped into the NHL and was a solid starter for 3-4 years before falling apart. This was peak Jones coming off of his best regular season as a pro as well.

2015: Crawford vs Bishop
- 2 of the best goalies in the league

2014: Quick vs Lundqvist
- Legit HOF duel

2013: Crawford vs Thomas
- 2 legit star level goaltenders.

I just don't see the basis in here to even really hope for a goalie coming off of an average or below season, or lacking some sort of high end pedigree being the guy who helps you make even the finals. The weirdest names on there are Adin Hill (coming off of a 1B performance of .915 during the regular season), Binnington (after a season with a combined SV% close to .930 in the NHL/AHL) and Khudobin (coming off of a .930 in 30 games).

I think the underlying guidance here is that year a really good goalie can flop, but only a really good goalie can get your there.
 
CH1 said:
Antti Niemi was a nobody when he won with the Hawks....
Click to expand...

Yup, that's fair if we're looking at exceptions. He was a .926 in finland the year before coming over to the NHL though, and then was a boring pretty okay in the AHL and NHL in his first two seasons (.912-.913) leading up to the Cup win.

and he didn't exactly stud in the playoffs either. .910sv% in the playoffs. That Chicago team was just good enough to win with mediocre goaltending. Which is generally the exception.
 
  • Like
Reactions: CH1
I see a mix of good goalies, rando goalies and goalies that had decent, albeit inconsistent careers. None of those goalie matchups suggest "this is the formula to win, you must follow it" to me. The stakes are too high to whiff on a big ticket goalie. For the Leafs sake, I'm spending 7-10m on a legit d before a goalie any day. There is not much margin for error with their current cap structure and there is far less variability with known stud d than goaltenders.

Absolutely go out and get a Sorokin if you can but it's not something I'm willing to blow my load on. I save the load blowing for a d.
 
Preston said:
I see a mix of good goalies, rando goalies and goalies that had decent, albeit inconsistent careers.
Click to expand...

Because you want to.

The common denominator is that in the years they went on their respective cup runs, they were largely excellent. The ones who weren't all had track records with excellence in them.

You're seeing a lack of consistency from individual goaltenders and writing it off as performance being unknowable, that anyone can get hot and we just don't see that being true. The prerequisite is being really good or at minimum having a really good season going into the playoffs.

Preston said:
None of those goalie matchups suggest "this is the formula to win, you must follow it" to me. The stakes are too high to whiff on a big ticket goalie. For the Leafs sake, I'm spending 7-10m on a legit d before a goalie any day.
Click to expand...

10 is nuts, but 7 really isn't. I don't think 7 stops you from spending anywhere else.

I'm honestly not sure what you're looking at if you can look at that list and not come away convinced that you need a goalie. Shit, the "weirdos" on that list are mostly backups who just had outstanding seasons and grabbed the job from the starter (or inherited it due to injury).

Dallas invested in a good backup for Bishop. St Louis had a top prospect in the system crushing the AHL they were able to call up, Hill was Logan Thompson's backup and took over due to injury after a really good season as a top 1B/Backup.
 
Woll's track record is all injured, but over the last 3yrs, from ages 23-25:

AHL: 37gms, .920sv%
NHL: 43gms, .915sv%

He had a good NCAA career too.

Those first two injured partial-years in the AHL are no good tho.
 
MindzEye said:
Because you want to.

The common denominator is that in the years they went on their respective cup runs, they were largely excellent. The ones who weren't all had track records with excellence in them.



10 is nuts, but 7 really isn't. I don't think 7 stops you from spending anywhere else.

I'm honestly not sure what you're looking at if you can look at that list and not come away convinced that you need a goalie. Shit, the "weirdos" on that list are mostly backups who just had outstanding seasons and grabbed the job from the starter (or inherited it due to injury).

Dallas invested in a good backup for Bishop. St Louis had a top prospect in the system crushing the AHL they were able to call up, Hill was Logan Thompson's backup and took over due to injury.
Click to expand...
I think Woll can absolutely have as good of a career as maybe half of those goalies. I'm not saying he will or that he's for sure good enough to win a cup with. But I don't value Khudobin, Jones, Hill, Binnington, Kuemper, or even MAF as highly. I see a bunch of guys with fairly attainable career arcs. Of course I'm coming at this under the viewpoint that outside of some heaters, Fleury was very overrated throughout his career. The others, meh. I don't see what's so difficult about matching them.
 
zeke said:
Woll's track record is all injured, but over the last 3yrs, from ages 23-25:

AHL: 37gms, .920sv%
NHL: 43gms, .915sv%
Click to expand...

Yup, that gives me some hope. I don't like that's all spread out though with weird outlier spikes of performance that prop up the overall sample but injuries are injuries.

21/22:
NHL - 4GP, .911%
AHL - 15GP, .907%

- The AHL performance is lackluster, the NHL performance pretty okay but both really small performance samples. At 23, this is a pretty disappointing season for a goalie prospect but small sample is small sample both ways.

22/23:
NHL - 7GP, .932
AHL - 21GP, .927

- When viewed as a whole, this was really encouraging. Still a backups workload more than anything else overall. This was the first time he showed any sort of legit upside as a goalie prospect imo. Really wanted to see him build off of this.

23/24
NHL - 25GP, .907
AHL - 1GP, .973

- Kind of disappointing both in the persistence of injuries stalling his development and the performance given what he did last season. This isn't terrible at all, for clarity. .907 is a perfectly average performance for a NHL goalie and doing that in his first real run of games is nothing to be upset about.
 
Woll is built for the playoffs. He is a technically sound goalie which works well in the playoffs where the games are tighter, a lot of perimeter shots, and tips where positional play is important

His game may not translate the best in the regular season when there is a lot of east/west plays requiring acrobatic saves but he will still always have solid numbers here too.

I’ve been a huge fan of his since the world juniors and I knew we had something. We need a coach that sticks with him and it’s going to pay off
 
MindzEye said:
23/24
NHL - 25GP, .907
AHL - 1GP, .973

- Kind of disappointing both in the persistence of injuries stalling his development and the performance given what he did last season. This isn't terrible at all, for clarity. .907 is a perfectly average performance for a NHL goalie and doing that in his first real run of games is nothing to be upset about.
Click to expand...


Also - he was at .916 through the first 15gms before getting that injury. Then, after missing almost 3 months, he came back and posted an .890 over a scattered 10gms. Though now add a .964 in the playoffs. So since his injury return, that's 12 starts - 1st 6: .884, Last 6: .922.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top