Top-notch goaltending can mask a lot of issues
PART IV: Lack of quality in net a factor for Canadian teams
The goaltending coach for the best goaltender in the NHL this season is known for his love of one-liners.
“You never need goaltending until you don’t have goaltending,” says the Washington Capitals’ Mitch Korn. “You know, anybody can be a backup until they have to play. Young goalies are like child actors; they’re dysfunctional.”
Korn, whose disciples include everyone from this year’s Vezina Trophy favourite Braden Holtby to Nashville’s Pekka Rinne and Hall of Fame goaltender Dominik Hasek, has hundreds of these witticisms. He sprinkles them into his sentences as he speaks, pausing after each delivery as though half-expecting to hear an accompanying rim shot.
They’re all true, he says. Especially the one comparing bad goaltending to having a bad back: You know, everything is affected.
“If you have a bad back,” says Korn, “there isn’t anything you can do well or quickly or without pain. You can’t even tie your shoes. That’s what your team’s like if you don’t have a goalie.”
Keeping with that analogy, the Montreal Canadiens threw out their backs when Carey Price was injured for the second time this season on Nov. 25. The other six Canadian teams, meanwhile, have gone years without being able to tie their shoelaces without grimacing in pain.
It’s a major reason no Canadian team qualified for the playoffs this season. And it partly explains why it has been 23 years since the Stanley Cup was paraded north of the border. As Korn says, “When you have a goalie, it’s like having money in a savings account. You’re more likely to take a bit of a gamble.”
Last year, Montreal rode Price’s MVP season to the top of the Atlantic Division, while Calgary, Winnipeg, Ottawa and Vancouver relied on above-average goaltending to qualify for the playoffs, unexpectedly in the case of Calgary and Winnipeg. But with Price hurt, there has not been a goaltender worth betting on this year.
Of the 10 worst goals-against averages in the league, six belong to players who spent the season on Canadian-based teams.
Without Price, who helped Montreal to a 9-0-0 start to the season, the Canadiens were exposed as a flawed team. The Senators never saw that same Hamburglar-type magic out of Andrew Hammond or Craig Anderson. Vancouver’s Ryan Miller and Winnipeg’s Ondrej Pavelec both lost their starting jobs (or are about to), while Jonas Hiller was so bad Calgary pulled Niklas Backstrom out of semi-retirement.
Edmonton and Toronto? Well, not even Price in his prime would have helped those teams.
“Certainly goaltending masks a lot of issues,” says TSN analyst and former NHL goaltender Jamie McLennan. “There wasn’t a goaltending tandem in Canada that masked the issues. There are some teams that could turn the corner if they had elite goaltending and there are teams that are average if they don’t have elite goaltending. There’s no team that has success with an average goaltender. They are the backbone.”
This is not exactly a new concept. Every year, it is said that goaltending wins championships. With the exception of maybe Chris Osgood in Detroit and Antti Niemi and Corey Crawford in Chicago, recent Stanley Cup winners have featured an elite goaltender in net.
While you can’t make the playoffs without above-average goaltending, it can also be the great equalizer.
As we saw last year with Montreal, it can turn an average team into a great one. Or as was the case this year with Calgary, it can put an otherwise good team into a lottery position.
The Canadiens might not have had a player in the top 20 in scoring in 1992-93. But they had Patrick Roy, a Hall of Fame goaltender who was named playoff MVP after winning a record 10 games in overtime en route to his second of four Stanley Cups.
“I can’t tell you how many times we had breakaways and shot the puck into the crowd because we thought we had to be way too perfect to beat him,” said Sportsnet analyst Glenn Healy, who was the New York Islanders goaltender that faced Roy and the Canadiens in the 1993 conference final.
“I thought, ‘I can’t make a mistake because I know he’s not going to make one.’ ”
Aside from Montreal — which would have made the playoffs had Price stayed healthy — Canadian teams have become goalie graveyards. It has been this way for years.
Toronto, which traded a future Vezina Trophy winner in Tuukka Rask for Andrew Raycroft in 2006, has had a revolving door of starters since Ed Belfour and Curtis Joseph were in net.
Vancouver had Roberto Luongo and Cory Schneider — perhaps the best tandem in the NHL — and has not been the same since trading them both.
Calgary is still searching for Miikka Kiprusoff ’s replacement.
Edmonton is looking for the next Grant Fuhr.
Ottawa and Winnipeg are looking for some sort of consistency.
Some of this is on the goaltenders. Some of this is on the team in front of them. After all, Oilers first-round pick Devan Dubnyk only became a Vezina Trophy finalist once he played behind Minnesota’s structured defence. And Brian Elliott’s career took off only after leaving Ottawa and arriving in St. Louis.
“It takes a certain temperament to play in Canada,” says McLennan. “Roberto Luongo was a star in Florida, goes to Vancouver and stars there and then the fans turn on him because he doesn’t deliver a Cup and then leaves and it’s like ‘Oh geez, we lost a really good goalie.’ They’re still recovering from losing him and Cory Schneider.”
“Ultimately you’d like to have a star in goal,” says Joseph. “There’s not a lot of them, though.”
Why haven’t goaltenders had much success in Canada over the past 10 years? Is it the pressure? Is it a lack of talent? Is it the team in front of them? Or is it that, like Winnipeg’s Connor Hellebuyck, who is 22, they are being asked to save the world night after night often when they are still learning the position?
“I think what happens a lot of times is goalies get rushed to the NHL,” says former Leafs goaltending coach Steve McKichan. “Toronto tried to rush (Justin) Pogge to the NHL, as an example. You put a young kid in that hotbed and it’s a tough place to learn your craft. If they kept Tuukka (Rask) and traded Pogge, Tuukka would have been thrown to the wolves. I’m not sure he would have had the same result as he did in Boston.”
Maybe Anderson, whose up-anddown career in Ottawa has mimicked an ECG machine, rebounds next season. Maybe Edmonton’s Cam Talbot looks better once the players in front of him mature and maybe Hellebuyck and Vancouver prospect Thatcher Demko develop into legitimate No. 1s.
Or maybe, with Anaheim’s Frederik Andersen potentially available in the summer, a team such as Calgary or Toronto finally bites the bullet and trades for a goaltender who can make a huge difference. As Korn says, “When you have a goalie, you have a mindset and it changes everything. Everyone’s approach, everyone’s confidence, everyone’s swagger. Everything’s better.”
That also includes, of course, the team’s overall record.