I didn't get to post this in the pre-game but you guys are ding dongs for pining over Grubauer while the Avs are playing some of the most complete hockey of any team in any division right now. Pretty sure if they had Holtby instead we'd be wondering why the Capitals let the guy go, they're making it very, very easy to play a good game as a goalie right now.
Look at the difference between Demko’s numbers and Holtby’s and you’ll quickly see a lot of the problem is number 70, not who plays in front of him. And I’m a long-term Holtby fan, but I think something must have happened to him physically sometime between 2017 and 2019 to completely throw him off his game.
Grubauer, on the other hand, is widely credited with being the Avs’ ‘rock’. They’re not a complete team, though they are a great team, and they’ve had no success this season when someone else has been in net. Their backup had a 4.15 GAA and .878% SV prior to being demoted to the AHL this week, and had won just 1 game in 5. Grubauer has 5 shutouts on the season. Their D does a nice chance of reducing Grubauer’s workload in-game compared to some teams, but that’s true of all great goaltenders - it’s not as though Vezina Holtby was playing in front of a beer league D-corp, while Toronto’s blue line is actually pretty good this year but their goaltending isn’t. An elite D-corps doesn’t usually result in 4+ GAA when their starter is on the bench.
I don’t think keeping Grubauer over Holtby would have won us two more cups, because I think the coaching and roster construction were too weak to really contend. But Grubauer’s proven himself to be a number 1 starting goaltender on a contending team, who can win playoff series, which arguably isn’t true of Holtby at this point. And while he isn’t making the most acrobatic stops every time, from what I’ve seen that’s because he (1) stylistically isn’t over-acrobatic, like a Fleury, and (2) is usually in very solid positioning to make the right stop.
But if anything, it should give us huge confidence for a guy like Vanecek that so many Caps draft pick goalies have developed into something good or special at the NHL level.