I get the whole argument that two or three games into the fray is far too early to be making judgments on teams, players and the season as a whole.
But by zeroing in on a pair of players who happen to be two of the three considered locks to make the Canadian Olympic Team come February I have a question: what the heck are we supposed to think about the early play of goaltenders Roberto Luongo and Martin Brodeur?
Throw in the recent performances of Detroit's Chris Osgood and there are reasons to worry.
Not a whole lot mind you; there's still four months to the Games and all three are capable and expected to get to the level of their past performance peaks well before the calendar show February.
But all three came into this season with a particularly poor performance from last season hanging over their otherwise stellar accomplishments and I can't help but think that one, two or perhaps all three are suffering from something akin to what plagued Scott Norwood.
You remember Scott Norwood, the one-time outstanding field goal kicker for the Buffalo Bills.? On the last game of the 1990 season - which just happened to be Super Bowl XXV - Norwood lined up for what forever would be known as the most important kick of his career, a 47-yard attempt that would decide the game.
He missed; inserting the words "wide right" into the lexicon of failure. Very few knew it at the time, but that was the beginning of the end of what had been a solid and sometimes spectacular career.
I know this because an enlightened editor, thinking I need a break from hockey, put me on the Bills beat the following year. I chronicled a second consecutive run (and a second of four consecutive Super Bowl losses) back to the NFL's championship game.
But I also witnessed first-hand the demise of Norwood who, try as he might and even with the support of the Bills and fans who rallied in Niagara Square on his and the team's behalf, never again had the confidence or the accuracy he possessed before that miss.
It came to a head in the third to last game of the season against the then Los Angeles Raiders. Three times with the game on the line the Bills drove into field-goal range and three times Norwood missed game-winning kicks, attempts that by his standards were easily makeable.
He finally did drop one through the uprights to win the game in overtime, but the damage was done. He had lost confidence in himself, and his teammates ( and I can remember All-Pro running back Thurman Thomas walking up the Coliseum tunnel and telling a teammate that had Norwood missed that last kick he was going to throw him off the team plane somewhere over the Dakotas) had lost confidence in him.
The Bills kept Norwood around until the end of that season mostly out of pride and loyalty, but when camp opened the following season Norwood was gone. Canadian Steve Christie was in his place and Norwood never kicked again.
I mention all this because Luongo, Brodeur and maybe Osgood seem to still have last season in their collective heads, not the whole season mind you, just the final game that defined it.
For Luongo it was Game 6 of Vancouver's playoff series with the Chicago Blackhawks. It was a must-win game for the Canucks and it was Luongo's personal nightmare. He was tagged for an uncharacteristic seven goals, his team, a team that was expecting to win based largely on his ability, was out and a summer full of questions and scrutiny followed.
It wasn't the Super Bowl, but for Luongo and the Canucks it was a mind-numbing defeat, one that caused some of the players to privately question Luongo's big game credentials and had media openly speculating that it might be in the Canucks' best interests to investigate a trade. It was also a game that caused Luongo to publicly question himself with an ill-considered "I let the team down" statement despite the fact he had played brilliantly to both get the Canucks into the playoffs and through a first-round sweep of the St. Louis Blues.
It wasn't all that different in New Jersey where Brodeur, considered "Mr. Clutch" by the general managers who four times awarded him the Vezina Trophy as the league's best netminder, was in a Game 7 with Carolina. After allowing a soft goal by Tuomo Ruutu to open the scoring, Brodeur settled down to help the Devils nurse a one-goal lead into the final seconds of play. If the game were just 58 minutes and 20 seconds long he would have emerged a hero, adding yet another chapter to his outstanding legacy. Instead, he was beaten twice in the final 80 seconds surrendering the lead, the game and the series to the Hurricanes.
Both goals were the kind his mother could have stopped.
Plays like that, especially in situations like that, are not easily forgotten. Goaltenders will tell you they are and the good ones and the great ones are defined by how quickly they are able to put those plays behind them, but that's usually when they are back in net the very next game. But what about having to live with a bad performance for an entire offseason; isn't that different?
Check out the video of Luongo's Monday night performance against the Columbus Blue Jackets where he gave up four goals on as many shots, the last three bunched together early in the second period. The performance led to a third consecutive defeat for the Canucks from the start of the season and put their star goalie on the bench.
Luongo responded with a good effort and a win Wednesday against Montreal, but that was an easy win (7-1) and it likely won't erase the nagging doubts in the minds of teammates and fans. The pressure is on Luongo every time he steps onto the ice and it's likely only to get worse as the Olympics come more plainly into view.
It's a similar situation for Brodeur. Playing in his 1,001st game Monday night in front of the uber rival New York Rangers, the three-time Stanley Cup winner let in the game-winning goal on a play similar to the one that pushed him and the Devils out of the playoffs last spring: a seemingly stoppable shot that simply passed right through his legs. He had a similar miss earlier in the game, a game that ended 3-2 in New York's favour.
It was eerily similar to his performance in the season-opening loss to the visiting Philadelphia Flyers where Brodeur was deemed responsible for two of the goals against, goals that prompted the home crowd to jeer the player who has for nearly two decades given them so many reasons to cheer.
Even his coach, Jacques Lemaire, called Brodeur out after the Philadelphia game saying: "You get a couple of easy goals on him and after that, maybe he was questioning himself."
"Easy" goals? Marty Brodeur "questioning himself?" Has it really come to that?
The jeers can easily be explained; when the Rangers come to New Jersey it's not uncommon for the Rangers to have more fans in the building than the home team and Rangers fans love to have their way with the Devils and especially Brodeur. It's been that way ever since the Devils set up camp across from New York's shores. But a Game 1 rebuke from his coach, the winningest goalie in NHL history "questioning himself?" It does smack of Norwood Syndrome.
It's entirely possible both these men rebound from these poor starts. I would be the first to argue that goalies, on the whole, are mentally tougher than field goal kickers because they have the focus on them every minute of every game. They are better equipped to handle the difficult situations simply by virtue of having faced so many of them.
But there are instances when the unrelenting pressure gets to a man, times when the constant scrutiny and the endless pressure begin to take a toll.
My guess is that both men will fight through this and come January the problems that punctuated the end of last season and the beginning of this one will be firmly in the past, but if they aren't…
Well, both the Devils and the Canucks can go only as far as their goaltenders can take them. That's a lot of pressure and when you throw in the upcoming Olympics, on Canadian soil no less and with the whole world watching, well that's a whole lot of pressure; even more than a decent field goal kicker faces with the whole world watching.
I saw first-hand what happened to Scott Norwood after just one kick went just a tad too wide.
It was not a pretty sight.
Until the Olympics are over, maybe even until the playoffs are over, these two men will have to live with unrelenting pressure: the hope here is that they're able to handle it.
