That's where every shot against Ottawa seems to find these days.
A few sobering notes after Ottawa's whatever-goal loss to New York on Tuesday night -- they've currently dusted off an impressive first-period and 2-1 lead by conceding the fifth goal of the night, and there's still a period to play.
I get an awful lot of questions about what went wrong with the team this year, and honestly that's a topic that's probably going to take dozens of blog posts to address. More recently, I think there's a much cleaner answer -- though I don't think Ottawa's performance in the last ten games is the reason why they'll miss the post-season.
Their save percentage the last ten games? .877 (and counting). You almost have to be horrible and unlucky to have that happen. It's like a cataclysmic combination of epic proportions.
Of course, one could argue -- I certainly would -- that this is stuff catching up to Ottawa in the bad sense. Like, there aren't many (any?) teams where a defenseman willfully makes a pass to an open opponent in front of the net, like Chris Phillips did today. More often than not, that's beating the goalie, whether it's Robin Lehner or Henrik Lundqvist.
Speaking of Lehner: I like the kid a fair bit, but boy is this rough patch a brutal one. Look at his five-game rolling save percentage over his career. We are at the nadir. I think. I hope.
Other than one tiny blip early in his career, it's mostly been good.
So, I have no idea what's going wrong. If anything. I really don't know much about the position.
I do know that a good goaltender stops 920 of every 1,000 shots. Robin Lehner was doing that for the first-half of the year, when the team opted to roll with the then struggling Craig Anderson. Anderson's picked up his game a bit, but suffered injuries in a game against Nashville. Enter a now-struggling Robin Lehner, and ...
Yikes.
Thanks for reading!