No doubt, tonight was WAY more than Sparks' fault.
However, every goal comes off a defensive mistake. You can find excuses for almost any goal if you try hard enough.
First of all, the 3rd goal was horrible. Bad coverage? Sure. But he got schooled plain and simple. Didn't even go for the poke check yet left his five-hole wide open.
4th goal should never have happened. Pay attention to the entire play. Two seconds before, Ladd passed (not shot) it straight at Sparks and he lamely taps it back into the crowd. This puts Marincin in an awkward position and of course, panic ensues and next thing you know it's in the net. The game was finished right there.
The other goals were legitimately not his fault. Complete defensive breakdowns. Freddy may have saved 1-2 of them but he's on a different level skill-wise.
6/14 games, he's given up 4+ goals. There are technical issues in his goaltending which make him prone to being hot or cold in such an extreme manner.
Some of those games have been the Leafs' worst defensive efforts though, and almost all of them are on the second-half of back-to-backs. The Leafs already play tired and disinterested more often than anyone should accept on normal nights. It's even worse on back-to-backs.
Chicago game, terrible defense on both sides.
Both NYI games, terrible effort from the entire team, but once again terrible defense.
Boston game, another poor effort.
Really the DET games are the ones where you could say he could have done a bit better. He gives up some regrettable goals this year and does not look nearly as pretty as Andersen does in net, but he's also not given the same level of defensive performance that Andersen often gets. Unless Andersen got exceptionally lucky, we still lose this game by at least 2 or 3 goals.
I am still happy with the choice to stick with Sparks. He had the most potential by far, and he's going to be cheap for at least the next couple of years. His consistency should come with time and training over the summer and beyond. The good news is that we won't have to pay very much to keep him either. He's not going to get anything better than the Stalock deal (3 years, 785k AAV). We will probably get him for like 3 years/2.4 mill or 2 years/1.5 mill. or something along those lines.
