I'm getting the feeling that Kipper is the kind of goalie that gets tense when things open up and knee-jerks his saves rather than calmy positioning himself to provide simpler saves. That first shoot-out attempt was an example as he went down early and didn't have his feet against the posts.
But he's proably shaking off the rust. He was much better yesterday, but still not his normal self.
From my experience paying extremely close attention to the way he plays over the last 6-7 years, as I model my own game after his, even though I very specifically tell the kids I coach not to as it is definitely not the easiest style to learn, is that when he is on, which he was last night, his vision is perfect, traffic doesn't matter, he finds the puck, and his positioning is damn near flawless.
Where he runs into trouble as he did in the first two is when he loses his rebounds, because his game is based almost solely on reading the play and reacting to how he believes it will turn out, if he is wrong, or is off his game he can be made to look foolish. This is where he ran into trouble against SJ and ANA, he read the plays poorly, and had no control over his rebounds.
His style of play does not lend well to shootouts because instead of reading the play he must read a single player and react to him. Unfortunately, the downfall of Kiprusoff is unless he knows that players tendencies in shootouts, he pretty well always reacts to the first fake. It's his downfall, NHL players are incredibly good at shoulder and head fakes, and if your not good at seeing them, ultimately you'll fail, just the way it is. One thing you should know about Kipper is he spends more time in the video room than any other goalie in the NHL, he KNOWS the opposition and their tendencies so during the game he knows what they will do before they do it. It's why he's always in position.
I think it was Kassians goal last night where he fanned on the puck then pulled it over and scored, but that's when Kiprusoffs game became sloppy, he knew Kassian would shoot, but Kassian recovered from it faster than Kipper could and scored. From how he played last night, three things he did showed he was playing like we've come to expect, 1) He caught pucks 1 foot in front of his chest before they got to him, even though if it hit him in the chest he could have just swallowed it up. That shows me he was so focused on the puck, that he was going to determine how it played out. 2) Several times he made big saves of large deflections (didn't know how to say it but deflections that severely changed the location of the puck) Goalies only make these saves when they see the deflection as its happening or before, because they happen to quick to react to. and 3) His puck handling, it was cool, confident and crisp, when he is not on his game, it is sloppy, inconsistent, and often rushed, last night he was engaging himself on the breakout and actually looking for deep passes on the Powerplays, that shows me he was confident in his ability and more importantly, in his teammates.