Player Discussion Cam Talbot

[KeithIsActuallyBad]

The problem is that the Oilers can't afford a bad goal/major error per game, they're just not good enough.

 

[Mc5RingsAndABeer]

It's defense. Look at Condon, Scrivens, Lindback, or even Talbot from before.

MAF and Price were considered busts before too. Defense matters more than people would like to admit.

 

[Ace101]

I feel like the problem's both the defence and forwards. It's probably a long shot but someone like Ladd could seriously help.

 

[space321]

Imagine if Talbot didn't **** the bed against the Flames.

 

[McHilman]

It's defense. Look at Condon, Scrivens, Lindback, or even Talbot from before.

MAF and Price were considered busts before too. Defense matters more than people would like to admit.

I guess it was the defense who let in 2-3 soft goals this game? The team couldn't buy a goal or power play in the second period out shooting the Hawks 22-6, come within one in the third and then he let's in another soft one against Toews. The defense hasn't been fantastic but he needs to stop a beach ball.

 

[McTedi]

I guess it was the defense who let in 2-3 soft goals this game? The team couldn't buy a goal or power play in the second period out shooting the Hawks 22-6, come within one in the third and then he let's in another soft one against Toews. The defense hasn't been fantastic but he needs to stop a beach ball.

Agree that the Kane goal was a back breaker and he needs to make that save. But how bad was that defensive coverage on that play. Our defence is a joke, everyone needs to realize this before we are overly critical of our tendys.

 

[Pros and Cons]

It's defense. Look at Condon, Scrivens, Lindback, or even Talbot from before.

MAF and Price were considered busts before too. Defense matters more than people would like to admit.

They keep relying on the goalie to his job, but what these young players fail to realize is that everyone needs each other to be successful. The Oilers have to stop watching the game happen and make it happen for themselves. Too often they allow the opposing forwards opportunities in the hopes that they recover the puck from failed attempts. If you give anyone opportunites they will beat you.

 

[McDavidMcCup]

Talbot's save percentage is .893 this year.

That is simply not good enough. Against Chicago he once again puts up a .857 and blames two tips on his three goals, ignoring the long backhand by Kane.

Dude, even your own coach is calling you out, stating that the team needed one of the three goals.

I was a big Talbot fan up until the Calgary game and that rocked my confidence. Tonight's Chicago performance has put Talbot firmly in my doghouse. I hated that interview afterwards by Talbot and I think it spoke to his character which I had not had cause to question before tonight.

Be a man about it. If you play badly, call a spade a spade and say that you let your team down. And don't fool yourself, a 0.857 save percentage is letting your team down.

 

[McDavidMcCup]

Further points:

Edmonton Sun post game ranked him a C-

Edmonton Journal David Staples ranked him a 3/10.

You can't stand there after that game and send the message out that you thought you made some nice saves and there was some tipped shots. Very disappointing

 

[TheHoff]

Further points:

Edmonton Sun post game ranked him a C-

Edmonton Journal David Staples ranked him a 3/10.

You can't stand there after that game and send the message out that you thought you made some nice saves and there was some tipped shots. Very disappointing

Just saw this interview. Hideous. What an attitude player! Awesome. If this is normal for him, I hope he gets dumped sooner than later.

 

[Replacement*]

Further points:

Edmonton Sun post game ranked him a C-

Edmonton Journal David Staples ranked him a 3/10.

You can't stand there after that game and send the message out that you thought you made some nice saves and there was some tipped shots. Very disappointing

They always talk about the ones that go in. They don't talk about the saves or that Talbot kept the Oilers in the game for a long while at 2-0. Or that he absolutely stoned the lethal Kane, who was left all alone in front of the net for 3-4 secs with the puck during which Talbot played it excellently. I guarantee you if Nillson is in net for that he's down on the play, he commits, and Kane puts it in.

When you're an Oiler goalie though you're dealing with a lot and some very serious scoring chances on severe breakdowns. I mean we're allowing a perfect pass across setup for a one timer to a wide open guy in the first minute of the game and covering NOTHING on the play. Ask yourself what 5 Oilers are even doing on the ice other than staring and waving. Our pass lane coverage was abysmal.

 

[Replacement*]

Just saw this interview. Hideous. What an attitude player! Awesome. If this is normal for him, I hope he gets dumped sooner than later.

What exactly offends you with that interview. Talbot is the first person to call himself out if he felt he didn't play well. This was not his opinion on last nights game.

 

[Replacement*]

Talbot's save percentage is .893 this year.

That is simply not good enough. Against Chicago he once again puts up a .857 and blames two tips on his three goals, ignoring the long backhand by Kane.

Dude, even your own coach is calling you out, stating that the team needed one of the three goals.

I was a big Talbot fan up until the Calgary game and that rocked my confidence. Tonight's Chicago performance has put Talbot firmly in my doghouse. I hated that interview afterwards by Talbot and I think it spoke to his character which I had not had cause to question before tonight.

Be a man about it. If you play badly, call a spade a spade and say that you let your team down. And don't fool yourself, a 0.857 save percentage is letting your team down.

Mclellan didn't "call him out" he said I'd like to see a save on one of the 3 shots. He went on to say the 3rd Kane shot, the backhand, is the one he would to have seen a save on.

Still, the Oilers only scored 1 so the 3rd goal was largely academic.

Talbot is fine and better than what we've had.

 

[DerpMorg]

I don't know how we can even get a clear idea on what our goalies can do when we're still putting the equivalent of an ECHL/AHL quality defense in front of them night after night.

 

[Mr Positive]

I don't know how we can even get a clear idea on what our goalies can do when we're still putting the equivalent of an ECHL/AHL quality defense in front of them night after night.

Our D is not bad. There are aspects they have to improve, but we can succeed with this group just like how Pittsburgh is one of the best defenses in the league today with their young group of nobodies. Unfortunately it's going to take some time for our team to learn to win, and maybe it's going to be too late by the time they do it, but maybe not.

 

[Perfect_Drug]

Sofar this season has lead credence to my analysis of the Talbot acquisition.


Talbot isn't a world better than Scrivens/Dubnyk, and Those two were not as bad as they initially seemed.

 

[Aerrol]

Our D is not bad. There are aspects they have to improve, but we can succeed with this group just like how Pittsburgh is one of the best defenses in the league today with their young group of nobodies. Unfortunately it's going to take some time for our team to learn to win, and maybe it's going to be too late by the time they do it, but maybe not.

Yeah... We don't have a Kris Letang. That's a pretty huge difference. If we had a number one our d would look totally different.

I'm with Replacement on this one. How many goalies do we need to destroy before people recognize that no one is going to look great playing here? Carey Price would probably look average behind this d corps.

 

[doulos]

I'm not worried about Talbot at all. Goaltending is not the issue for the Oilers on most nights.

 

[Mr Positive]

Yeah... We don't have a Kris Letang. That's a pretty huge difference. If we had a number one our d would look totally different.

I'm with Replacement on this one. How many goalies do we need to destroy before people recognize that no one is going to look great playing here? Carey Price would probably look average behind this d corps.

Kris Letang is not known for defensive acumen and besides, he isn't on the ice all the time. The Pens are playing great D, arguably best in the league. So maybe they go down a few spots in that ranking without Letang. The point still stands. We don't need to be best in the league. We just need to be at average, but if Pittsburgh is proving anything right now, it's that we can even be above average. Judging by the high quality of our young Dmen in skill and character, I would say that we could definitely achieve that.

 

[longtimeoilfan]

Yeah... We don't have a Kris Letang. That's a pretty huge difference. If we had a number one our d would look totally different.

I'm with Replacement on this one. How many goalies do we need to destroy before people recognize that no one is going to look great playing here? Carey Price would probably look average behind this d corps.

My thoughts exactly... 'we' need to stop blaming the goalies and look to where the real problem is.

Look at Devan Dubnyk. He ended up going 27-9-2 with a 1.78 goals-against average, and .936 save percentage (with five shutouts) after he was traded, leading the Wild to the playoffs.

 

[Aerrol]

Kris Letang is not known for defensive acumen and besides, he isn't on the ice all the time. The Pens are playing great D, arguably best in the league. So maybe they go down a few spots in that ranking without Letang. The point still stands. We don't need to be best in the league. We just need to be at average, but if Pittsburgh is proving anything right now, it's that we can even be above average. Judging by the high quality of our young Dmen in skill and character, I would say that we could definitely achieve that.

First, Letang is Karlsson lite. His defensive abilities get forgotten because he's so good offensively. He's well above average in breaking up plays. He's been in the running for the Norris before injuries at least one year and I think twice. More importantly, he can make a ****ing break out pass. That is our single biggest problem right now. None of our d can get the puck to our forwards in motion and so we can never get clean zone entries unless we really slow the game down which leads to our entries getting choked out.

I agree that we can be better than we have been but until nurse or klefbom magically develop into a number 1 without any sheltering (unlikely), our goalies are going to look bad.

 

[McHilman]

We should be blaming the goalies, the Oilers clearly had the bulk of shots and high grade chances. We had numerous odd man rushes and breakaways, the Hawks defense looked to be worse than ours yet they won. How could that be??? It was as simple as their goalie clearly outplaying ours, our goalies need to be better.

 

[Aerrol]

We should be blaming the goalies, the Oilers clearly had the bulk of shots and high grade chances. We had numerous odd man rushes and breakaways, the Hawks defense looked to be worse than ours yet they won. How could that be??? It was as simple as their goalie clearly outplaying ours, our goalies need to be better.

You should go back and count the number of grade-A chances the Hawks had this game. When a goalie is getting peppered with amazing shots all game like Talbot was, he's going to have slip ups. Even if one goal was fairly weak, the consistent trend here isn't that we somehow only trade or sign bad goalies all the time. The trend is that we crack them by giving them 0 support game in and game out. That's at least looking slightly improved this year...but we still give out far, far, too many beautiful chances. Chances that Talbot, coming from NYR, probably is conditioned to ignore a bit because they'd never give these up.

 

[nexttothemoon]

Some stats:

Last season (without Talbot) the Oilers were 30th in sv pct with .888
Last season (with Talbot) the Rangers were 3rd in sv pct with .923

This season (with Talbot) the Oilers are 25th in sv pct with .895
This season (without Talbot) the Rangers are 1st in sv pct with .946


So the conclusions are that either Talbot is terrible and the Rangers were holding him up with a higher sv pct than he "deserved" to have...

OR

The Oilers are defensively awful and the Rangers are defensively much better which correlates directly with the save pct stats of the team and the goalies that play on the team.


Essentially we have the Oilers sv pct which has improved by 5 spots in the league with Talbot and Nilsson on the team and we have the Rangers who are still one of the best teams in sv pct going from 3rd to 1st currently. Of course the sample sizes are still small this season with teams only playing about 15 games but the trend is certainly visible when you are looking at such stark contrasts.


This is a great example of how much a goalie depends on his team defense actually.

Are we honestly to believe that Talbot lost his entire ability to tend net in the space of a few months since coming to the Oilers or is the more likely scenario that he is basically regressing to the defensive mean of the team in front of him BECAUSE OF the team in front of him.

There are 18 other players out there on each team every game that contribute to the defensive abilities of a team beyond what the goalie contributes.

I think it's fair to say Talbot has had somewhat of a mixed start... he's been very good to excellent in some games, average in others and in a few he has been less than average. That's just the eye test and by my eye... for most of his starts he's been solid in net except for some questionable goals let in recently BUT again some of those goals can be attributed at least partly to defensive coverage as well.

A goalie isn't an island and he certainly is affected by the team in front of him.

 

[space321]

Talk about Oilers bad defence or NYR's great system all you want, but that game against Calgary was absolutely terrible.