Exactly
You need to be getting somebody better than Ned.
You want a serious battle
Going with like Reimer / Ned is not an option
Waddell needs to stop by Goalies-R-Us on his way home and pick up one of those.
Seriously, I understand what you're getting at and don't disagree with most of it. But as others have already mentioned, getting someone
better than Ned might not be realistic. Ned led the entire league in regular season save% and GAA (min 14 games played). Granted, that's only 23 games played and we all know the problem with small sample sizes. But his playoff performance was solid (.920 s%, 2.17 GAA) and he's been very successful at every level he's played so far. We don't know
for sure that Ned is going to be a long term 1A solution, but he at least has that promise.
When it comes to choosing Ned's partner next season, seems like it's still likely to be a bit of a crapshoot given how variable (schizophrenic, lol?) goalies are. At one point Lehner seemed like the best goalie option available, and probably worth paying a premium. At another point, didn't it seem like Holtby? To further complicate matters, when in effect, the Regression Towards the Mean principle means that a goalie that had a great season one year might disappoint the next, while a goalie that had a disappointing season can pleasantly surprise. So until a goalie gets a very large body of work, choosing one based on recent performance can almost be counter-intuitive.
Hopefully our analytics department has come up with some advanced analyses that might reduce the voodoo involved with picking goalies. The last 3 years I'd argue that we've done much better than most would have anticipated given who we've rolled out, so maybe they're on to something.