Mats Sundin HHOF worthiness

JaysCyYoung

Registered User
Jan 1, 2009
6,088
17
York Region
JCY, two things:

1. The McCabe game you are thinking of is game 5, 2004, not game 7, 2003.

Fair enough. For some reason I think of it as being from the 2003 series. My mistake.

2. Toskala may not have truly been the 7th- best goalie in the NHL heading into the 2009 season, but I did expect to see THN rate him high. Yeah, he was bad over the next two seasons, but in the 2008 season (particularly down the stretch, when you say he got shelled) he was winning games for the leafs, often stealing them. That sv% is not stellar, but it also was 10 points better than his predecessor and the best posted by a post-lockout leaf goalie, until Reimer. Overall his tenure in Toronto was frustrating but you are extrapolating 2010 and 2009 back to 2008, denying him the credit that he is due. (For the record, I wanted them to tank hard and felt he was the main reason they weren't)

This just goes back to the whole fact that the print media tends to give goaltenders in Toronto a free pass despite sub-par play. How any goalie could be ranked outside of the top thirty in terms of the most objective measure of goaltending performance (save percentage) and still continue to get lauded is simply beyond my comprehension. As for your comment about it being ten points better: mediocrity is still mediocrity. Just because Toskala was not as unfathomably bad as Belfour's final season with the Leafs or Raycroft's run as team starter does not dissuade one from coming to the realization that he was still turning in poor performances. And no I am not extrapolating anything. He was garbage for most of his tenure as a Leaf and pointing that out in no way means that his poor performance in 2007-08 was nearly as bad as his Finnish League quality performances in the next two seasons.
 

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