Breaking news from the team Twitter account. Zbynek Michalek is back tonight. He has missed the last twelve games and is making a somewhat surprise early return to the team tonight. Good times as he is easily the Coyotes best defensive defenseman and he automatically makes the goalie better. ---- I like the Oilers trades yesterday in the sense that I like Ben Scrivens because I watched a lot of him in Toronto and I think he’s a decent goalie. However, these trades should come with a huge caveat: Until this year, pretty much everyone in the world considered Dubnyk a better goalie. Scrivens was a third stringer on the Maple Leafs (!) and Dubnyk was considered to be the starter on the league’s most exciting up and coming team.
Now, fast forward four months in the What-Have-You-Done-For-Me-Lately-NHL, where people put – in my opinion – way too much stock in recent events and forget the past too quickly, and now people are celebrating the acquisition of Scrivens as a huge upgrade.
I predict Dubnyk will thrive in Nashville where defense is more than just a theory. If you look closely at the stats of NHL goalies, there are indications that what team they play on has more to do with their success than their talent.
For one thing any goalie at any time can go from AMAZING to GARBAGE in no time at all. This blog’s comment section has been privy to some hilarious criticisms of Mike Smith – all of them undeserved. Which I think pretty clearly shows what I'm talking about.
What’s more likely? That Mike Smith forgot to how to play goal overnight? Or that the Coyotes are just not as defensively sound as they were when Smith was building a reputation as one of the NHL’s best goalies? Certainly Devon Dubnyk is not the untalented loser some Oilers fans would have you believe. He seems more like a scapegoat than anything else to this outsider.
Let’s look at the LA Kings back-up goalies for the last two seasons:
Bernier 9-3 .933/ 1.88 Jones 8-3 .950 / 1.41 Scrivens 7-5 .931/ 1.97
Look at how crazy good those stats are (and consider also Quick’s unlikely ascension to being considered an elite goaltender and usurping Bernier’s “goalie of the future… pedigree) and ask yourself what is more likely: That the LA Kings are savants at choosing goalies or that playing behind a stacked team has a MASSIVE influence on a goalie’s stats.
To further prove my point, consider that goalies playing for the Blues (goalies who play for a team featured nearly daily on this site, rumored to be looking to acquire Ryan Miller) have 27 shutouts over the past three years. Again, this is indicative of the team the goalie plays for having way more to do with his success than his talent – which, I believe, among people capable of making the NHL varies way less than the difference overall in talent between entire rosters.
All this is a long and convoluted way of saying that you can be confident in betting that Scrivens will not continue to post Vezina worthy stats on the Oilers and that Dubnyk will somehow magically re-find his talent down in Nashville. And you can take it to the bank that Mike Smith is a solid goaltender, who's contract is fine, and who, even if they choose to go the route of selling off assets this year, the Coyotes have no reason, incentive or need to upgrade.
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The ridiculous “debate… (and I use quotations to indicate that it’s not a real debate) over Mike Smith is so preposterous that it barely warrants comment. He is still one of the most talented goalies in hockey and it doesn’t matter who you replace him with, a team with three third lines is never going to be all that competitive.
Sure, the Coyotes could do some damage if they got insane goaltending, like they did the year they went to the conference finals. However, you can’t predict when anyone will go on a run like that. You could trade for Price, Miller, Quick whatever, it can’t be predicated. Goalies sometimes go on the kind of runs that win playoff series singlehandedly but in general, they play to their team’s level. It’s so rare to see that level of goaltending that it doesn’t even happen league wide every year. Mike Smith was never going to be consistently Hasek-esque. But he will play decent when he’s on a decent team and that’s all you can ask.
The only reason to ever consider moving Smith is if his contract is preventing you from acquiring new players because of the salary cap. That’s not even close to happening, so I don’t care if his contract was five years longer and three million more per year: if it’s not preventing you from getting better, it doesn’t matter. Its not your money.
Oh and I don’t buy the argument that he is somehow old. He is 18 days older than me. We are not old. The only people who say a goalie who is 31 in some kind of derogatory way are people who are a) under 25 b) unaware that goaltenders routinely have longer careers (or at least play at a higher level at an older age) than position players.
Brodeur won a cup, won at least 40 games five times (and 38 one other year) and appeared in 2 finals since he was 31. Smith is no Brodeur, but the argument that 5 million per year (cheap actually for a #1 goalie) extended well into his thirties (Smith’s) is somehow a bad contract (Or worse that you “always knew… it was a bad contract) is patently ridiculous.
The Coyotes need a lot of things. They do not need a goalie.
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Make sure you watch last night’s highlights, if you haven’t already. Ovechkin dropping his stick and then picking it up for the one time was pretty awesome. It's must see.
http://video.nhl.com/videocenter/console?hdpid=49&id=538749&navid=nhl:topheads
If you bother with the link, be sure to check out the next video on their list, which is Patrick Kane scoring a hilarious goal into his own net last week vs. the Oilers.
--- As if the Coyotes were not having a bad enough time lately. Earlier this week they had to face the Jets in their first game with a new coach. Now they have to take on Vancouver tonight a day after they lost 9-1. I don’t have any stats to back me up here – so I may be totally wrong – but I think playing a team that lost 9-1 might be even tougher than playing a team who just changed coaches.
The Canucks will be sure to make up for last night with a great game tonight. The Coyotes are in tough, but have to be due for a win. Hopefully they can build on the many positives from Tuesday’s game against St. Louis.
No word yet on the goalie, but it would be silly if they didn’t go with Smith, in my opinion.
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Finally, if you need a smile there is a hilarious article on Yandle at Foxsports, who apparently put as much thought into their sports as they do their news. It asks if Yandle is suffering some kind of mysterious post-Olympic snub hangover. Of course, this ignores the fact that Yandle is no worse than the second best player on the team nearly every night. The article uses the preposterous “stat… of plus/minus to “prove… he has played terrible lately. Yandle is a minus 10 for his last four games. The Coyotes were outscored 16-6 in those games. They lost all four. Yandle generally is on the ice for half the game. I don’t know if this is a newsflash, but if you play half the game for four games and your team happens to lose all four, your plus/minus is going to be ugly but it is no way indicative that the losses were your fault, or even that you are playing poorly.
I have personally seen no drop in Yandle’s play since the Olympic announcement. In fact, some of his best games of the year have occurred lately and been obscured by all the losing. If I have one request of hockey fans and analysts everywhere, it's to get with the times and stop using plus/minus to “prove… who’s playing good and who’s playing not.
As always, thanks for reading and hit me up with some tweets @coytotes1234