Agree that Blackwood is "more proven", but I don't know exactly what that means. He was in the ECHL a couple of years ago. Consistency doesn't seem to be a hallmark of his.
I don’t consider 5 games in 2017-18 being “in the ECHL”. It was a tune up after the AHL season during the ECHL playoffs. I agree that his 2017-18 year was rough, it made me doubt his future at the time, but his next two seasons have been excellent.
It doesn’t really matter how good Blackwood is though, we need another NHL goalie. If Fitz is comfortable with going with the AHL guys we have as 2/3 behind Blackwood that’s a failure of his part.
Fitz couldn’t have seen what would happen with Crawford. He also can’t solve this problem this nanosecond but we can’t go with through this season with Wedgwood, who’s a AHL goalie, and Senn, who was a rookie last year playing in NA the first time. This would to force Ruff to play the crap out of Blackwood out of desperation which would be bad.
I’m going to give him time and not freak out over every goalie he doesn’t pick up on the waiver wire but if we don’t get another real NHL goalie this is a big big problem.
The Capitals have Copley, who isn’t very good but way better than Wedgewood at this point but more importantly they have Vanecek, who’s very likely ready for the bigs. How Fitz fixes this new problem, which again isn’t his fault, is a big test for him. Any goalie solution won’t be great, this is about finding a NHL goalie who can share the load and play at least sort of OK.
I would love for Fitz to pleasantly surprise me here. There are four unsigned RFAs, with Roslovic being the only other significant one, and I consider an unsigned Bratt a failure on Fitz’s part. I get that others disagree and respect that that but I view contract negotiations as a GM responsibility and believe he the one who needs to find a solution. Every other GM managed to get their RFAs signed, I don’t buy Bratt as being a unique problem here. Hopefully Fitz can solve the goalie problem a little quicker and better.
