Please refer to this response for any questions about last season. This guy is 100% accurate and fair. Thank you.
Carey Price to start the game tonight for the first time in 330 days
- Thread starter Seb
- Start date
Please refer to this response for any questions about last season. This guy is 100% accurate and fair. Thank you.
Habs Halifax
Loyal Habs Fan
Comparing goalies to players is not a good comparison! The better comparison would be a ace starting picture in the MLB or star quarterback in the NFL. Loosing guys like this are huge! Plus there were other key long term injuries to Petry and Gally and others! And the drop off from Price to Condon is massive! If Montoya was in net last season, we would of made the playoffs.
Price is the Habs best player no doubt! However, they still are a bubble playoff team without him and a decent goalie as his replacement. Price is the difference between just making playoffs and going deep into the playoffs!
In 2015/16 Habs were 19-4-3 for the first third of the season. Price played only 12 of those games, yet the Habs kept winning even with Condon in nets. Habs were 1st in GF during that period -- Price didn't score a single one of those goals. And then, yes, by December Condon totally ran out of steam and took the team down with him.
Nobody would claim Montreal would've been a scoring powerhouse if Price hadn't been hurt. But it's just as wrong to claim the team is nothing but Price. That's become a dumb cliche. Montreal can win without Price, but they CAN'T win with the worst goaltending in the league. No team can win with the level of AHL goaltending the Habs got last season. With an average goalie they would've made the playoffs; with the best goalie they were a Cup contender.
FYI: For the first third of 2015/16 (October, November)
Mike Condon 15 GP (he relieved Price in his 12th game), .918 SV%.
Condon's stats plummeted in December. From December through April his SV% was .890-ish. The notion that the team in front of him was unaffected is ridiculous.
kingdok
Registered User
- Jun 8, 2004
- 8,009
- 16
He just couldn't keep up with the workload and bringing Scrivens surely didn't help.
The only reason people completely ignore the multiple key injuries on the Habs last year is because in their minds management and coaching are always the problem with Montreal.
It's a narrow, predictable, obsessive and fallacious viewpoint. It's a created narrative that basically says I was right that the coach sucks because when Price went down the team collapsed.
This is a team that had Barberio playing 25 minutes a night last year some nights with a sieve behind him. Barberio who has now cleared waivers and is in the AHL. This is a team that iced 15 different defencemen, 15! Guys like Joel Hanley, Darren Dietz, and Victor Barley combined for over 30 games played alone.
On forward Sven Andrighetto who also just cleared waivers play 44 games, Michael Brown 14 games, Lucas Lessio and Stefan Matteau 12. All guys that are not good enough to be on the team this year.
Habs lost the 3rd most man-games due to injury last year. Many of these were absolute key injuries.
They lost Jeff Petry for 31 games, Brendan Gallagher for 29 games, Subban for 14 games.
You have to look at the combination of these injuries and the snowball effect it has. Not just one injury. When you are already down a key player, losing another one just compounds the situation. If you just lose one, it's not as bad.
Outside of last year, Habs under the current management have consistently been one of the stronger teams in the East.
Yet here we have people still pushing the narrative that this team is terribad without Price. The only reason these people chose to go with that story is because it supports the ridiculous notion that Habs coaching and management is a monstrous problem. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. But it is far from being the disaster its being portrayed to be.
It's a narrow, predictable, obsessive and fallacious viewpoint. It's a created narrative that basically says I was right that the coach sucks because when Price went down the team collapsed.
This is a team that had Barberio playing 25 minutes a night last year some nights with a sieve behind him. Barberio who has now cleared waivers and is in the AHL. This is a team that iced 15 different defencemen, 15! Guys like Joel Hanley, Darren Dietz, and Victor Barley combined for over 30 games played alone.
On forward Sven Andrighetto who also just cleared waivers play 44 games, Michael Brown 14 games, Lucas Lessio and Stefan Matteau 12. All guys that are not good enough to be on the team this year.
Habs lost the 3rd most man-games due to injury last year. Many of these were absolute key injuries.
They lost Jeff Petry for 31 games, Brendan Gallagher for 29 games, Subban for 14 games.
You have to look at the combination of these injuries and the snowball effect it has. Not just one injury. When you are already down a key player, losing another one just compounds the situation. If you just lose one, it's not as bad.
Outside of last year, Habs under the current management have consistently been one of the stronger teams in the East.
Yet here we have people still pushing the narrative that this team is terribad without Price. The only reason these people chose to go with that story is because it supports the ridiculous notion that Habs coaching and management is a monstrous problem. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. But it is far from being the disaster its being portrayed to be.
True. I've mentioned this countless times: I don't blame Condon for being exactly what he was -- a rookie backup. He didn't ask to be put in a role he was woefully under-qualified for. I remember an interview he gave acknowledging the huge mental difference in the job between backup and starter. I wish the kid nothing but good luck.
kingdok
Registered User
- Jun 8, 2004
- 8,009
- 16
me too. I like him and I think he can be a good backup in this league. But Montreal needs a backup who can cover extended time in case Price gets injured again. Montoya seems better than Condon for that (for now).
He was also .94% in his first 8 games and HFboards or something like that and had a thread going for him in the front page. His stats were similar to Price when the team was playing well.
I don't believe there's a single goalie in the league that could have saved Habs from their collapse. Personally I think it was all lockerroom related and it was probably the main reason why Subban was traded. Not saying it was all Subbans fault, because I think Therrien is a terrible people person. I just think they were clearly playing worse then they should have, but I digress.
kingdok
Registered User
- Jun 8, 2004
- 8,009
- 16
You think it's Subban's fault Condon's play started to deteriorate in december when he got an unusual onverload of work?
Condon had eight good games as a backup, and about 50 terrible games as a starter. No team -- not one -- makes the playoffs with a goalie combo of Condon, Tokarski and Scrivens. They weren't so-so or even weak -- they were worst in the league across the board.
Think of it this way: If you believe the best goalie has the power to propel a team to the top of the standings, as Price did, wouldn't the worst goalie have the same power to take a team just as far in the opposite direction? That's what Condon did.
MasterDecoy
Who took my beer?
Just last season Stars were first in western conference with Niemi and Lehtonen. Flyers went to finals with a tandem of Leighton and Boucher. I have no problems believing a good team could go to playoffs with Condon, Tokarski and Scrivens.
So i think it's safe to say that goaltending is the most important position in hockey and that Price is the best goalie in the world (general consensus), correct? Like i previously stated Pittsburgh was perfectly fine without Crosby (they finished 2nd in the east both times he was injured).
By deductive reasoning what does this make Price? Pretty safe to say that he has a bigger impact than Crosby.
Every stat says you're wrong. The goalies you mentioned were on the lower end of the NHL spectrum; Condon was not even on the spectrum. Mike Condon was not NHL material. Dallas and Philly did not have to suffer from the gong-show the Habs went through in nets last year.
Of course a star goalie has a bigger impact than a star forward. That's true for any team.
But to your point, the correct equivalence would be Pittsburgh replacing both Crosby and Malkin's entire lines with AHL plugs, centered by George Parros and John Scott. Montreal did the equivalent swap when they replaced Price with the tank-tandem of Condon, Scrivens and Tokarski.
Here are Montreal's goaltending stats from December, which is when the collapse began, to season's end:
Mike Condon: 40 GP/ 898 SV% / 2.94 GA
Ben Scrivens: 13 GP/ .906 SV% / 3.07 GA
Dustin Tokarski: 5 GP/ .882 SV% / 2.91 GA
And keep in mind these numbers DON'T include rebounds and goalie-giveaways, where Condon was beyond awful.
Now, why this group was left there with no help from Bergevin is a good question, but a different subject...
FLYLine27*
BUCH
Yes its hard to compare them, both teams lost important player's but MTL was forced to replace an elite #1 goalie with a below average goalie (and as mentioned, this is at an extremely important position).
In Pittsburgh's case they could just juggle players around in order to lessen the impact of losing Crosby, Malkin takes over as their 1C, Staal takes over as 2C. Their 3rd line suffers a loss (by moving up Staal) but in the overall picture it's not as big of an impact as replacing Price with Condon.
They're not forced to replace their 1C position with a scrub like we did with Price and Condon (and they had the depth to move up Staal to Malkin's position), that's true. Fair point.
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In fairness, I don't expect most fans to bother digging into the stats. Price is a big name. People made the easy and somewhat lazy connection between his absence and the Habs' collapse, without looking at the level of his replacement. It's much easier to say "The Habs are nothing but Carey Price", than to check the facts and notice the black hole that opened up in nets when Price was gone.
What will be interesting is seeing what LA does without Quick. Do they take a tip from Montreal's disaster and trade for a real starter? Do they stick with Budaj? How does their team adapt to the drop in quality in nets?
Their story will certainly add evidence one way or another to what we went through in Montreal.
jacks*
Registered User
- Mar 29, 2013
- 11,311
- 3
Maybe (a big maybe) yes. But no way with the defense in front of them the Habs were forced to ice due to injuries on D.
Help
Can I help you?
The difference between a tandem of Price/Montoya (assuming they perform at their 3-year average, and assuming Price gets 60 starts, with Montoya getting 22, and assuming they faced the 2406 shots the Habs allowed last year) and the mess that was Condon/Scrivens/Tokarski/12 games of Price is 55 goals against
Consider this and try to tell me that goaltending WAS NOT the issue for the 15-16 Canadiens. I'll wait.
Consider this and try to tell me that goaltending WAS NOT the issue for the 15-16 Canadiens. I'll wait.
Hackett
BAKAMAN
It was an issue, probably the biggest issue, but it also masked some other key long term injuries.
I don't care if price is healthy or not. If you go through about 15 dmen, lose petry for the year early on, lose Gallagher twice to long term injuries, the team will be affected. Not as much with price in the lineup, but affected nonetheless.
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