http://www.edmontonjournal.com/spor...oes+falling/10390008/story.html#__federated=1
This article flat out annoys me. If I were going to talk about Edmontons goals scored and goals allowed I guess this is what the nutshell version would be.
1 . Edmonton had a horrible start to the season.
2 . Edmonton hasn't scored a whole lot of the goals since the very start of the season.
- Edmonton has bunched all of their talent onto the first line making it easy for the opposition to focus on one of our lines.
- Edmonton has a ton of newcomers on the roster this season and because of that lack of chemistry could have had a small hand in Edmonton's failure to put in more goals.
3 . If Edmonton had been scoring significantly more goals, they probably would have still lost because their goaltending has been so horrible on some nights.
4 . Edmonton and Canadian Media is crazy to not have had Edmonton's goaltending coach's reputation put into question.
- The dude has been around since 2009.
5 - Edmonton has had a long list of mixed bag goalies since then.
- Gerber was never anything special and was a low-end back-up goalie when he came to Edmonton. Played 3 games while putting up an impressive save percentage and never played in the NHL after that.
- Garon was another guy you'd describe being in the middle of being a very low end starter and a high end back-up goalie. Posted decent career numbers during years that he wasn't playing a lot of games. Had 2 sub par seasons in Edmonton. His stats didn't increase before or after coming to Edmonton.
- Drouin-Deslauriers was picked quite high at 31st in 2002. Had nice size and seemed to be pretty consistent in his play, but after a couple of seasons in the NHL he was exposed. Never really made it in the NHL and is a career AHLer.
- Yann Danis showed short sparks of brilliance earlier in his career. Most of his games in Edmonton with downright disastrous. Looks like he's having a hard time holding onto a job in the minors at this point.
- Jason Labarbera has some decent stats in the past before coming to Edmonton, but after Edmonton picked him up my friend was laughing his ass off at our team. As my friend suspected, his stats were buffed by playing a team that was doing a great job of protecting the net and blocking up scoring lanes in prime scoring areas. After leaving Edmonton, it looks as if he's a total bum.
- With the Dallas stars and the Edmonton Oilers, Richard Bachman hasn't done anything to really grab anyone's attention. I don't think it's a stretch of the imagination to say that he's a career injury call-up.
6. Edmonton has also had a fair number of goalies that the fans expected a lot more out of.
- Nikolai Khabibulin's efforts had been a bit enigmatic before he came to Edmonton. We were expecting a guy that could keep us in some games, but that didn't happen.
- Before coming to Edmonton Scrivens had posted average numbers in Toronto and above average numbers in L.A while playing protected minutes as a back-up goalie. Last season in Edmonton he had a few stand-out performances but his stats did take a bump playing in Edmonton. He faced a lot more shots and was played a lot more frequently. At the start of his year he was downright horrendous. He's had a few decent games this season after playing 14 games in the 14/15 season, but he hasn't looked like a starting goalie anyone would be happy to have on their team.
- Ilya Bryzgalov is another enigmatic goalie who was known to play well behind good blue lines and for good teams before coming to Edmonton. When Edmonton was in a pinch due to beyond disgusting goaltending he was brought in and played a whopping 20 games before being traded. He played a couple of decent games, but he has a tons of downright horrible performances. He was traded to the Wild where his sav% was in similar range to that which it was in Edmonton, but his win/loss record looks way better for the Wild. He's currently a free agent.
- 33 year old Viktor Fasth had amassed a career 17-8-3 record playing for a very respectable hockey team before coming to play for the Edmonton Oilers. His personal stats were around average before coming to Edmonton. After being traded to Edmonton late in the 13/14 season, Fasth would play 7 games with a 3-2-1 record. Unfortunately, his stats would take a massive dip at the start of the 14/15 season.
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DEVAN DUBNYK, a former Edmonton first round pick developed very slowly in the minors. Never posting elite numbers in the AHL while losing a ton of games. His first year in the NHL was a little rocky, but he turned things around in time to be given the chance to play average hockey for 3 seasons with the Oilers. A lot of people suggested he'd play a lot better if he wasn't playing being so many horrible hockey players. The 13/14 season went so badly for him that after Tommy Salo it should be considered the worst collapse by a goaltender in the history of the Oilers organization. He was traded to the Predators and after 2 games he was waived because he was somehow playing even worse than he was in Edmonton. He was then traded and waived down to the AHL where his play was still poor for a guy who's spent the last 5 years in the NHL. He was finally sent down the the ECHL, but he didn't end up starting any games there. Nobody expected to ever hear from poor Devan ever again... but to many people's surprise he was picked up by the Phoenix Coyotes, where goaltending coach Sean Burke seems to have turned poor Devan into a viable goalie again.
Some people can say that our goaltending should be crappy because we've never had anything awesome in the first place... but the pattern I see here is as follows: With the exception of Dubnyk (who eventually crashed and burned) none of our goaltenders since 2009 have shown any signs of improvement while being with the Oilers.
If your goalie coach can't get anywhere with that many goalies over a 5 year time span, you've gotta fire yourself for not already having fired him years in advance.