With the stud goalies expected to win roughly the same amount of games, playoff positioning will fall on the backups.
I'm not sure what year it is on the Chinese calendar, (and I'm sure now that I've stated that someone will pipe up with the right animal. ED NOTE: It's the Ox.), but in the world of hockey, my guessing is that this must be The Year of the Goalie and it may not be for all the right reasons.
It appears that almost every team is looking at their goalies to get them through to April and the post-season. And because it's not out of the realm of possibility that it will take 92 to 95 points to make the playoffs, that means that goaltenders such as Curtis McElhinney, Andrew Raycroft, Peter Budaj, Mathieu Garon, Steve Valiquette, Tuukka Rask, Brian Elliott and Jeff Deslauriers will be expected to play - and win - their own share of games. All the teams that are associated with the above all have workhorse first-string goalies that are expected to play more than 60 games that leaves the list of back-ups to play about 20 games throughout the year.
The concern? Those 20 games are actually worth 60 points - I know that sounds stupid - in the standings. All the starters are expected to win about the same amount of games - are you listening Roberto Luongo? - so that leaves the battle of backups as a key indicator as to whether a team will make the playoffs. That's not really fair when you consider that most backups earn well below a million dollars while the star goalies are in the multi-million dollar range. Add to this the fact that some of the game's high-profile goalers, as Cliff Fletcher would call them, have been less than great.
Salary cap issues aside, some teams have to improve at that backup position if they want to play into May. I'm not saying anything that most general managers haven't already realized; it just seems to have become an issue a little earlier than normal this season.
