Jim Kelley

Jim Kelley writes regularly on the NHL for Sportsnet.ca and can be heard on Primetime Sports on the FAN590.

Michael Leighton has led the Flyers into the Cup final.

Ask anyone, anyone associated with the National Hockey League from the most casual fan to a Hall of Fame coach or general manager and you tend to get the same response: "goaltending wins playoff games."

Think of it along the lines of "good pitching beats good hitting" in baseball, "defence wins championships" in football, speed kills in auto racing or "bite me" in boxing.

OK, the "bite me" is a stretch, but you get the point.

In the long and sometimes incomprehensible history of hockey, goaltending was always the rock upon which a winning franchise was built.

So what happened this year?

Well if you just took a cursory glance, you might argue that newer goaltenders have emerged and they are winners. OK, so maybe you never heard of Tuukka Rask (unless of course you're a long-suffering Leafs fan) but hey, he did come on well in the second half of the season and he did end up as the league leader in save percentage (.931) even if he did play just 45 games after finally wrestling the No.1 spot from Tm Thomas. There's something in the record there and you could at least expect there might be good things in store for the Boston Bruins in their immediate future.

Then there's Jaroslav Halak and what, he just happened to be around when the Montreal Canadiens knocked off the most potent offensive team in the NHL with a solid performance en route to a monumental first-round upset of the Washington Capitals? Well, yeah, that's pretty much the way it played out in the first round and the equally stunning second-round triumph vs. the Pittsburgh Penguins. But if Halak is the second coming of Patrick Roy, how do you explain the seemingly effortless win for the Philadelphia Flyers in a mere five games? These were the seventh and eighth seeds in the East and they had tied for the same number of points (88) and yet the Flyers dominated the series despite going with goaltending that had a history of being mediocre at best.

And how do you explain the absence of Ryan Miller, second to Rask in save percentage (.929) and a goals-against average of 2.22 to Rask's 1.97 and something of an Olympic hero for America and their silver-medal effort in the Olympics. He's a good young goalie but with more experience than Rask and Halak combined. He's also the likely Vezina Trophy winner and he didn't get out of the first round.

And then there's Martin Brodeur who just happened to lead the league in wins again this season (45) yet was gone in the first round, losing to the Flyers and their goaltender of the moment Brian Boucher who isn't even playing now that Michael Leighton is back between the pipes.

Well here's my explanation: pretty much anyone with some degree of athletic ability and mental toughness can star in goal in today's NHL, be it veterans like Evgeni Nabokov, Miller, Henrik Lundqvist or Ilya Bryzgalov or flat-out newcomers like Rask, Halak, Jonathan Quick, Jimmy Howard or Antti Niemi as long as the team in front of him can play good to great defence.

Go ahead, pick a series and tell me what was more in evidence: good to great overall team defence or good to great goaltending? All go with defence in Boston over Buffalo, the Sabres not only didn't score well, they didn't defend well either, twice giving up two-goal leads.

In Montreal's win over Washington, Halak did his job, but the Canadiens won because the Capitals took the Habs lightly and they didn't make any true physical effort to win the series, at least not in ways comparable to the Canadiens who bottled up Washington's best scorers with a smothering kind of defence and added to it via a superb commitment to shot blocking. True the Capitals came to the series with doubts about their netminding, but did you see them put up the effort the Canadiens did in terms of supporting their goaltenders?

It wasn't even close.

Same goes with the Habs win over the defending champion Pittsburgh Penguins. Pittsburgh didn't play near the stellar defence it showed in beating the Detroit Red Wings in the finals last spring (in part because the Penguins couldn't hold on to several key defencemen and defensive-minded players in the off-season). In shutting down Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, the Canadiens essentially dared the Penguins to beat them with their secondary players. To be sure, Marc-Andre Fleury’s less than stellar goaltending added to the problem for Pittsburgh, but in essence the Pens lost because they couldn't match the Montreal defensive effort employed against Pittsburgh's best players. That left the outcome in the hands of Pittsburgh's secondary players and they didn't rise to the level necessary for a win.

In truth it was only when the Habs met a team capable of a solid defensive commitment that their run ended. Philadelphia can put a solid top four on the ice, including the still-imposing Chris Pronger and that hurt the Habs. Couple that with the fact that the Flyers forwards pressured the puck well and made a commitment to physically deny the Habs not only the space in front of their goalkeeper, but space in the neutral zone and even in the Habs’ own end and Philadelphia simply wore the Habs down, especially the smaller players who found room against Washington and Pittsburgh but seemed to run out of gas vs. the more physically-imposing Flyers. In the only game the Habs won, they got to the goalie and beat him badly. The Flyers only let that happen once.

One can make a similar argument in the West. The San Jose Sharks made it through the first two rounds in part because they are a well-balanced team that also won the conference during the regular season. They had good to very good goaltending in Nabokov and it was thought that would be the difference vs. the inexperienced Neimi. Nabokov played well, but the Sharks scored just seven goals (all of them on high shots) and that's largely because they didn't have all that many shots. Chicago, when it wasn't dominating with puck possession, was good enough and deep enough to throw a blanket over both of San Jose's scoring lines. Patrick Marleau had a good series, making good on those high shots and usually off big rebounds, but the Hawks denied Joe Thornton and the always-disappointing Dany Heatley and they completely shut down Joe Pavelski's line, the line that had carried the Sharks through the first two rounds. Niemi would make a stop on a shot he saw coming all the way and the Hawks would quickly carry it away.

The Hawks did it with speed, great defence, puck possession and a net presence that the Sharks couldn't match. The Sharks limited Chicago scoring stars Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane to one goal between them, but the two regularly set up Dustin Byfuglien either directly in front of the net or rushing down the slot and the Sharks had no answer for that and no one to counter at the other end. Thornton, despite his size, is not a front-of-the-net player and even if he were the Hawks would have kept him and his passes from going there. Heatley, said to be injured, was a postseason failure on par with his last appearance in the finals when he did nothing for the Ottawa Senators.

I won't take anything away from Neimi's performance, but like Leighton he didn't have to be spectacular.

He was merely good and in today's NHL, good appears to be good enough.

As long as the team in front of you plays great.