Modifié 16 sept. 2021 à 11 h 37
Quoting: Radu47
?
How
Their d core is mediocre at best
Their goaltending is just brutal
I don't think Ottawa makes the playoffs this season. They would have needed 2 good stop gaps at RW and RD but didn't spend a dime outside of the 2 M$ on a position where they were already stacked pretty ok (LD)
I also have no idea how good the defense will be or not.
BUT that being said, If the "team defense" is like it was after mid March 2021, goaltending will be fine and I'd even say that Murray-Gustavsson would be one of the best duos in the league.
Gustavsson had 0.933 in 9 games, Murray had 0.954 in 5 games and Anton Forsberg had 0.909 in 8 games (Hogberg 0.912 in 4 games, Daccord 0.906 in 3 games)
I have no idea why they signed Forsberg but if it was Murray-Gustavsson, it would be far from a weakness IMO
It's just my opinion as a goalie myself for the past 3 decades. Note that I watch every game on PVR and analyze every goal against. I skip every intermission and ads, unless they have hockey people talking technical.
Quoting: Radu47
I'm realizing more and more that a key reason so many here see the sens moving up in the league surprisingly soon is gustavsson and... yeah.
A 9 game sample size is almost meaningless I mean it's like pebbles when a mountain of evidence is needed to appraise properly and accurately
Calvin Pickard, Korpisalo and many other goalies started off their careers at .920+ over double that sample size and we know what happened
Korpisalo was also great for 9 games against TML
Otherwise he's one of the worst G of this era (.905)
Gustavsson could be good sure
But there's no reason to expect he'll be even a qiality backup this season, especially given inexperience, he's just an interesting minor piece of their puzzle atm
Of course, nothing is guaranteed in life outside of birth and death. And it's the same for the development of a hockey goalie. I don't think anyone is debating that.
I also totally understand the 9 games sample argument and you're going to be absolutely right 99% of the time.
However, there is a particular context with Gustavsson
This guy was a 2nd round pick and always had a high pedigree, was very good in Sweden at a very young age and for his country internationally.
However the transition to North America didn't go smoothly and he was widly inconsistent in his first 2 years. I watch a lot of hockey and when it's local (Montreal/Ottawa/etc) I try to go live as much as possible. I saw him in the 2018 rookie camp but I wasn't really impressed. I was actually higher on freshly drafted Kevin Mandolese. And since then, he hasn't really gained me over to the point that I was much higher on Mads Sogaard (still am) but also Joey Daccord and even Mandolese. He was not cracking the Sens top-20 prospects anymore for me
But last year, I watched his whole 9 NHL games and some of his AHL games and he looked like a totally different player. It's like when a skater "breaks out" but this time it was a goalie. He looked like he figured it out so I made a COMPLETE 180 about him.
Sure, he could flop because a big part of a goalie's game is mental but I have rarely been wrong on goalies. For the record, I was calling Andrew Hammond a "flash in the pan" when he was rocking a 20-1-2 record and 0.941 SV% and everybody was raving about him.