Hibernia wrote on Wed, 18 December 2024 09:51

HamBlaster wrote on Wed, 18 December 2024 05:45 the insanely terrible effort on Reinhart's goal last night are perfect examples. I stopped reading when I got here. When McDavid scores this goal, we talk about the great skill. But when Reinhart does it, it's because of an "insanely terrible effort" on the part of our goalie. If you're going to complain any goal from the FLA game, this isn't it. Every goalie has bad games and the Oilers spend less than just about everyone on goaltending. If you're expecting Vezina level goaltending from start-to-finish every season, good luck. Sure, the Rangers are about to pay their #1 more than anyone in the history of the sport (and with a Milan Lucic style bulletproof contract) for most the next decade and their dude hasn't played as well as Skinner since the beginning of December.

I've seen the Edm media beating this drum too lately - look how the Oilers manage to get semi-competent goaltending while spending less than anyone! But is that a good decision? Yes, you can never have a perfect team in a cap season, so there's always some level of compromise at some position but the goalie is the only player on the ice 60ish minutes a game, and he's the one who can single-handedly lose games or series for you, so should we be skimping there?

As CrusaderPi pointed out, we've gone several seasons in a row with relatively cheap but mediocre tandems and the result is that goaltending has been a significant weakness through that time. Mike Smith imploding was a big factor in the sweep to Colorado (and if the Oilers hadn't blown the doors off Calgary offensively, he could have cost us that prior series too as he was awful throughout). Skinner completely crapped the bed against Vegas two years ago and almost duplicated that against Vancouver last year. I believe Koskinen/Smith were pretty terrible against Chicago and Winnipeg too.

At what point do we think that maybe under-spending on goaltending might be holding us back?

"Thinking that a bad team's best players are the reason the team is bad is the "Tambellini re-signing Lennart Petrell" of sports opinions." @Woodguy55
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