Bob Duff: Familiarty brings Salajko into Red Wings fold Detroit hires Grand Rapids (AHL) goalie coach Jeff Salajko to replace Jim Bedard as goaltending coach of the Wings.

Familiarity is just another word for laziness in the Ken Holland dictionary. It's worked so well with Blashill in that regard so far, hasn't it?

Familiarity is just another word for laziness in the Ken Holland dictionary. It's worked so well with Blashill in that regard so far, hasn't it?
- Hockeytown4life

Yeah salajko did a terrible job in working with mrazek so far.

I don't really know anything about goalie coaching in general or Salajko in particular, or how much having a "familiar" goalie coach really benefits the goalies in question, so I'll withhold making sweeping statements about whether or not this was the right move.

I will say that it's very interesting to look at Tom McCollum's career stats with the Griffins pre- and post-Salajko, keeping in mind the caveat that correlation does not equal causation.

Before Salajko, McCollum was an unmitigated dumpster fire:

2010: .881
2011: .879
2012: .891
2013: .904

After Salajko, he suddenly turned into a competent-to-very-good AHL stopper:

2014: .922
2015: .916
2016: .923

Now there could be a lot of things contributing to this sudden change other than the goalie coach, including natural physical and skill development, a better team in front of him, better luck, etc. Still, very interesting.