I think you're being pretty forgiving of Sparks. That third goal was absolutely his fault. If you want to be an NHL goalie you have to be able to absorb shots into your body or deflect them into the corner. That rebound fell perfectly into the slot on a weak point shot - Sparks' rebound control is poor and it didn't cost him in the AHL, but it will on the Leafs.
I'd also say that that the fourth and sixth goals (while not completely his fault) are goals that better goalies could save. He needs to do better at tracking the puck through traffic.
I'll also make a point on his athleticism. When I look for the traits that I think make a goalie good I don't really bother looking at the big lateral saves. Good lateral movement is important, obviously. But so much of when a goalie makes an athletic save like that toe save, the skill/luck of the shooter plays a larger role in whether its a goal than the skill of the goalie. Think back to McElhinney's big save on Crosby 2 years ago. It's a big athletic save, but McElhinney was at the mercy of crosby there and got lucky. If Crosby elevates that shot even a bit it's probably a goal. The overall point being that yes that toe save was big and being able to quickly move laterally makes it more likely you make the big save. But so much of it is up to the shooter it's hard to use as a metric for evaluating a goalie.
When I evaluate Sparks, I look for the things he can control. I look at his rebound control, how well he cuts off the angle, how far out he comes in his net, how controlled his movements are, how well is he able to keep his body tight and not let pucks slip through, can he track the puck through normal amounts of traffic, can he absorb pucks. The vast majority of shots are not the east-west shots that require huge athleticism. You need the technical abilities to stop those shots or else you'll let in a lot of bad goals.
Going back to his Calder cup run last year, I've been especially worried about his rebound control, lack of controlled movements, and his inability to prevent pucks squeaking though him. He didn't pay for it in the AHL, but these are huge holes in his game and the leafs can only spend so much time with this experiment. Home ice is the goal this year, and Sparks is lucky he got to face off against one of the few goalies who is likely worse than him. But it wont be like that every night.
Also just a quick note on the Andersen comparison. Andersen is a solid, consistent .918 goalie. He can have bad games and you can be fairly certain it isn't representative of who he is most of the time. Spark's has never looked good in the NHL, so trying to write off this game as if it were an anomaly isn't right. This game pretty much fits into the trend of how Sparks has ever played at the NHL level. How many points are they going to leave on the table to try and see if he's changed?
