Yeah well none of those goalies last year were any good, regardless of how people want to frame it.
I think Daws and Schmid will be good though, they were thrown to the wolves and just weren’t ready. It’s also waaayyyy too early to draw conclusions on Vanecek. I still have hope for him.
Mac, Hammond, Gillies were horrible.
Daws just shouldn't have been up last year, not for as long as he was. Schmid probably shouldn't have played more than 1-2 games either and I think he played like 4 or 5.
Hammond was the man behind the most absolute flukiest goalie run of at least the 2010's decade. He was already older at that time when that run started than Blackwood is right now. He had no NHL experience before that and he didn't have too much more NHL experience beyond the year after that fluky run. He was playing the end of that contract in the AHL in favor of the Sens keeping up the younger but now several years retired from hockey Mike Condon. Montreal brought him back from the NHL dead last year after years of not a single call up.
Blackwood is just not a good goalie for whatever reasons. Whether he used to be or not. Maybe injuries ruined him, I'm not as confident in saying that as I was with Cory, who injuries definitely ruined. His career started going downhill as soon as the ''Groin'' issues started, which were really hip problems the whole time, which are sometimes initially misdiagnosed as a ''Groin'' injury. He had core muscle (groin) surgery in the 2016 offseason. 2015-2016 was the best year of his career, because he was doing that as a clear cut starter of close to 60 games (he never played that many games in a season in Vancouver, he never even came close) and then after a very strong October of 2016 and a pretty good stretch of games into November of that year, he fell off a cliff right before Thanksgiving.
Looked to be having a bounce back season in 2017-2018, started missing time with injuries, completely cratered the end of his season, had a very strong 3-4 games in the playoffs, but then he was having hip surgery in the 2018 offseason and the most we got out of him was a 20 game streak of .920% that came in between two different 9-10 game streaks of .850% goaltending. He was toast. He didn't even do well or any better in the AHL in any of the years, up until last season.
Blackwood may not have ever been good (he was before he turned pro) as he had an AHL season worth forgetting about in 17-18 after a pretty average rookie AHL season. And that dreadful season was followed up by a pretty mediocre year, where he played well in the NHL that very same season, just not the AHL.
Keith Kinkaid was a very limited shelf life goalie. Those are goalies that are either typically out of the league full time by 30 or shortly after, or they do it in reverse and don't really stick in the league until they're in their 30's, like Curtis McElhinney, Carter Hutton, maybe even Scott Clemmensen. I famously predicted Keith Kinkaid's expulsion from the league within 2 years around January of 2018. I said something like ''If this guy is still in the league in 2 years from now I'll be shocked''. He was on waivers by December of 2019 and has only been up when Rangers goalies were injured/taxi squad goalie in 2021 cause everybody was allowed 3 goalies to a roster due to covid protocols.
Whether it's injury or not, we don't have any more time to wait for him and stop the clock for him. If he really is still injured then it's probably either permanent or it's just not worth further investment in him or waiting it out. He can't seem to keep up anymore, so we gotta leave him on the ground.