BigG44
Registered User
- Jul 12, 2007
- 24,127
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Rather than jumping back and forth between their signing threads, figured this was going to be a huge topic for much of the year.
Kari is the undisputed #1 at this point. Do any of the three behind him have a chance of dethroning him this season? Who is the backup Game 1? Who plays more games this season in the backup role?
Plus this is a perfect place to discuss Mike Valley's comments yesterday about all of the goalies.
Kari Lehtonen:
Anders Lindback:
Jussi Rynnas:
Jack Campbell:
Valley also indicated that Lagace and Kiviaho are headed to the ECHL ... but it's not a forgone conclusion they both go to Idaho. I don't know if that's because they want them both to start if possible or if that's because they might want to keep one of the guys they already have: Idaho traded for Beskorowany not long ago, they have the two undrafted NCAA free agents as well.
Kari is the undisputed #1 at this point. Do any of the three behind him have a chance of dethroning him this season? Who is the backup Game 1? Who plays more games this season in the backup role?
Plus this is a perfect place to discuss Mike Valley's comments yesterday about all of the goalies.
Kari Lehtonen:
I’ve always said how we get Kari to play at even a higher level is, first, that the idea number of games for him is about 60. We say that every year and then we get into a situation where it’s hard when you have a world class goalie at your disposal not to play him, especially when you are in such a tight playoff race. But I think if you have the ability to play him a little bit less and keep him mentally fresh then you can squeeze a little bit more out of him.
What a lot of people don’t know is that Kari is a guy that shows up three hours before a practice, three hours before a game. He is the first guy here taping his stick. He puts so much into it mentally and emotionally every day that when he does finally get a day off it’s very relaxing to him because he can completely unwind. He wants to be successful and he does all the little things. He is the ultimate pro, so he’ll never tell you or any of us that he is mentally drained. If you look at the last two seasons that we had, the lockout schedule which was a condensed schedule, and you look at last year it was a condensed schedule because of the Olympic break, it’s a lot to put on anybody and he played the most minutes in the league. For us to say he wasn’t mentally drained was pretty unreasonable for any of us to assume.
Anders Lindback:
He then got thrust into that starting role in Tampa based on that contract they signed him to. He adjusted his game a little bit, and it just didn’t work out for him. I’m the type of person who is not going to look too much into the past, criticize what was done or what wasn’t done, but I am going to look at where are we now and what needs to change.
The first thing we did with Lindback is we dissected all 27 games that he played in, that’s including playoffs. We looked at every single goal and started looking for patterns and came up with a nice document of where we need to get to, these are the things that need to change, these are the things that are great in your game. We have to get him playing really well, and I believe we can get him there. I believe a big part of it is confidence, but I think there are six or seven major things within his game that we want to adjust.
Jussi Rynnas:
He’s very similar to Lindback in that he has many of the same qualities. He’s a big guy, an athletic guy. He has a burning desire to show that he can be an NHL guy, not only an NHL guy but a top NHL guy. When you have guys like that and you can form a good relationship with them, work with them and come up with a plan of how are we going to reach these goals, it is a good combination. It is a good problem to have when you have four goalies that are all the same.
Jack Campbell:
He’s much more in control of his emotions now. I am not going to say it is perfect yet because there are still times we have to make sure we address it, but he has definitely gone the right way.
Last year was a huge challenge for him. He put up [12-2-2 record, .942 save percentage], so when he played he was fantastic. Would that have remained over the course of playing 50 games? Who knows? I would hope so. The reality of it is that his next step is to stay healthy and make sure that we get him to play a full season at that high level and then we can start talking about the next step. You’ve got to walk before you run and right now we are walking. We are starting to walk a little faster and soon we’ll start running.
Valley also indicated that Lagace and Kiviaho are headed to the ECHL ... but it's not a forgone conclusion they both go to Idaho. I don't know if that's because they want them both to start if possible or if that's because they might want to keep one of the guys they already have: Idaho traded for Beskorowany not long ago, they have the two undrafted NCAA free agents as well.
