Goalie statistics are largely voodoo. Goalies numbers get worse when their teams get worse, that's a fact. Rask had an elite team early in his career which helped his numbers. His team struggled for a few years, and that is reflected in the stats as well.
Agreed and thank you for acknowledging that.
My issue is that when I bring up my criticisms of Rask (and any goalie making 7 million on the cap), the first and seemingly only defense of him is "well he has the best save percentage of all time".
So I then played the numbers game, and then suddenly those same people were like "well numbers don't matter". Which I pretty much agree with. When you average out statistics, it doesn't give you any context whatsoever to timing of goals or quality of goals scored, which is the issue with Rask specifically. So I compiled the numbers argument for the last 4 years of his 7 mil cap hit contract, and am using that as the defense against the people who's only defense is "he has the best sv% of all time".
They want to give him all of the credit for the good stuff, but none of the blame for any of the bad. No goalie is good enough to make up for deficiencies in front of him, so it's stupid to pay one like he is.
Also the argument of having an elite team around him influences the goalie's numbers significantly, is basically my entire point overall. The team around the goalie is more important than the goalie himself (aside from extreme cases good or bad). Therefore it's dumb to build from the goalie out. You can not win a Cup with bad goaltending, but you generally have a really hard time winning a Cup if your goalie is making 7m (or the equal percentage) on the cap. Those are facts. Hopefully this year is the exception to the rule.
Regardless, I've provided plenty of evidence to support my OPINION, legitimate evidence, so as not to be dismissed as "trolling" or "hysterical nonsense". People can disagree with me, I welcome that. That's what the site is (supposed to be) about. But anyone dismissing everything I'm saying as being "a hater" is void of credibility altogether. Especially Bruins fans who act like I'm a "Rask hater" when I've said the entire time that I don't think any goalie is worth 7 mil on the cap, not just Rask.
Great goalies are consistent. They give chance for team pretty much every night. They might steal games sometimes, but no one really care about stealing the games. No one can do it often enough, it really matter.
Agreed, which is why it's stupid to overpay a goaltender in the modern era. That money is better spent elsewhere on the cap. That's exactly my point.
