Early on in the NHL season has been a shortage of reliable puckstoppers around the National Hockey League.
Daren Millard likes to joke there are only three or four great goalies playing in the NHL today. At least I think he's joking.
The host of Hockeycentral @ Noon, who just happens to be a pretty good stopper himself, has been alarmed at the lack of quality big-league goaltending this season. Then again, shouldn't we have seen this day coming?
After all, when action resumed after the lockout there was a much greater emphasis on increasing scoring. First there was the crackdown on obstruction that was choking the life out of the game. The NHL's best players had to wade through minefields while making their way to the opposition's goal.
Then there's the reduction in the size of goaltender's equipment. There has even been talk of increasing the size of the net, which for the record, I favor. But that's another story.
Unlike Millard, who has a soft spot in his heart for goalies, I don't give a damn how many goals they allow. The more the merrier. Give me a 7-5 shootout any night of the week over a 2-1 nail-biter.
That said, Millard has a point.
With few exceptions, goaltending has been unusually unreliable this season. Henrik Lundqvist of the New York Rangers has been exceptional, as has Ryan Miller of the Buffalo Sabres and Niklas Backstrom of the Minnesota Wild. Carey Price has been pretty good, too, and Roberto Luongo looks like he is rounding into form.
But there are more question marks than sure things out there.
Even San Jose's Evgeni Nabokov, who is 9-2-0-0 coming off a Vezina Trophy-finalists season has curious numbers. How does one explain his .894 save percentage? That ranks him 24th in the NHL, hardly worth writing home to Ust-Kamenogorsk about.
Edmonton was prepared to hand the crease over to Mathieu Garon who looked up to the challenge of being the Oilers No. 1 stopper in the early going, but he has since come back to earth. So they turned to veteran Dwayne Roloson, whom they had hoped to deal away, and he came through for a few games. All the while Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers, who was signed to a one-way contract, has played twice and has looked pretty good. If you saw the look on Oilers president Kevin Lowe's face last night as his team fell behind 5-0 with Garon in goal, then you know he is agonizing over what to do with his three stoppers. Stay tuned.
The Chicago Blackhawks brought Cristobal Huet to town, hoping he'd play as well as he did down the stretch for the Washington Capitals last season thereby allowing them to trade Nikolai Khabibulin, but that plan has been scrapped. Khabibulin has been the better of the two and now the Blackhawks have way too much money invested in net.
Speaking of the Capitals, after Huet bolted town they turned to Jose Theodore who played superbly for Colorado last season. Well, Theodore is 4-3-0-0 with a 3.44 goals-against average and .877 SP while being out-played by his backup, Brent Johnson.
Goaltending continues to be a sore spot in Canada's capital city where Alex Auld appears to have the No. 1 job for now. Martin Gerber with a 3.39 GAA and .891 SP just cannot seem to take advantage of the many opportunities he has been given during his time in Ottawa to take the lead role.
Jean-Sebastien Giguere looks like he is back on his game after a rough start in Anaheim and Mike Smith of the Tampa Bay Lightning was his team's best player even when it struggled to score goals, but has hit a few bumps in the road as of late.
Vesa Toskala was supposed to be one of the main reasons why the Toronto Maple Leafs wouldn't have a serious shot at picking John Tavares No. 1 overall in the 2009 entry draft, but it has been the Leafs' scorers, not their goalie, who have been mostly responsible for the team's surprisingly good start to the year. Toskala has been uncharacteristically off, especially early in games when his team needs him most. Consequently the Leafs have had to dig themselves out of many holes their goalie has put them in.
Without question the most disappointing goaltender this season is Marty Turco of the Dallas Stars. Based on his play the past two years in the playoffs, one could argue he should be right up there with Luongo and Martin Brodeur as the leading candidates to tend goal for Team Canada at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. But Turco was 3-5-2-0 with a shocking 4.34 GAA and horrific .837 SP. You just know he'll get better, but he'd better step on the gas before his poor play leads to non-playoff consequences for the Stars.
All in all, goaltending is not exactly the difference between winning and losing that it was just a few years ago.
"The standard of greatness has changed," Anaheim defenceman Chris Pronger said. "As the game changes to encourage more scoring, maybe we have to adjust the numbers that we think goalies should attain to be considered great."
