ok i'm getting really really ahead of myself here but jacob markstrom was far and away vancouver's MVP. when he got hurt at the beginning of february, the team went into a crazy tailspin and basically was falling out of the playoff picture that marky carried them to. 3-5-0 before the shutdown, with only one regulation win.
then when play resumed he was playing vezina hockey. he knocked off the wild in the play in, then against the defending champs put up a .930 while averaging almost 40 shots a game, then was very good again against vegas, despite his numbers dropping as the team had been just totally and completely outclassed through four games.
but then he gets hurt, team is down 3-1 in the series, and they turn to highly anticipated rookie thatcher demko. and this is the ewing theory part: the team completely changes strategy with marky not in net. they go into 2003 ducks mode and let enormous volumes of vegas shots through, just making sure demko can see it. they scramble like maniacs to deny any second chances demko doesn't absorb. in games 1-4 they were banking on pettersson, hughes, miller, boeser to score goals and counting on marky to steal every game, like they had in the st louis series. in games 5 and 6, they just totally babcocked it.
in two games, both regulation, demko faced 91 shots. they took marky's already ridiculous workload and added nine more shots each game. for his part, he saved 90. very giguere-like, extremely square to every shot, incredible at absorbing the puck, mentally as dialed in as you basically can be, almost every save looks routine, almost never puts himself in a position to have to make a spectacular save, though he did make a handful when he had to. and he looks absolutely frickin' enormous in the net, and that's saying something considering marky is 6'6 and demko is "only" 6'4.
so none of this is an indictment on markstrom, who played well enough to probably win a conn smythe on a good team. but the team is giving itself a different, and seemingly better, chance to win without relying on marky to be patrick roy.