What happened to Antti Niemi?
- Thread starter Nightmare1000
- Start date
izzy
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Bjornar Moxnes
Stem Rødt og Felix Unger Sörum
Niemi was the Hawks weakness in 2010 playoffs. The fact that the Hawks didn't go 16-0 was because of Niemi's incompetence. Otherwise Niemi was never that great to begin with. He had an elite lockout season and that's it. He got exposed when he went to a poor defensive team.
Blackhawkswincup
RIP Fugu
Combination of degrading physical abilities and poor D/System in Dallas that exposed his biggest weaknesses
Niemi has always depended on his athleticism and agility to succeed at G. With his decline of physical talent he can no longer cover for the major flaws in his game
I appreciate Niemi for his role in 2010 cup win (He was amazing vs Sharks and passable for most of playoffs with only a few real bad games) and he had some good years in SJ but he was never an elite or even top tier talent and at this point he probably isn't anything more then an average/below average backup on his best days
Niemi has always depended on his athleticism and agility to succeed at G. With his decline of physical talent he can no longer cover for the major flaws in his game
I appreciate Niemi for his role in 2010 cup win (He was amazing vs Sharks and passable for most of playoffs with only a few real bad games) and he had some good years in SJ but he was never an elite or even top tier talent and at this point he probably isn't anything more then an average/below average backup on his best days
gdsmack267
Registered User
Hopefully playing in front of a better team who plays a more team defense while limiting him to 25 games or so will help.
Johnny GODreau
Boom
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Zaddy
Registered User
- Feb 8, 2013
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He's never been been that good of a goalie, and he's getting older. I called it back in 2015 and I wanted nothing to do with him on the Oilers. Knew it would be a mistake to sign him to a hefty contract and expect him to be a good #1 goalie. Would not want to know where the Oilers would be if they'd gone for Niemi over Talbot. Anyway, Niemi is probably gonna have a decent year in Pittsburgh, not having to play too many games and playing in front of a good team again, but he's a pretty average goalie.
Paralyzer
Hyman >>> Matthews
See Toskala, Bryzgalov, Elliot and Raanta (To some extent). Goalies who looked good because of the team in front of them. They all weren't very good.
Nedved Petr
David Tomasek
Neuf
Leaving HFBoards for now
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Niemi just fell off a cliff in Dallas. He couldn't even unseat Lehtonen, and that defense did him no favors. I suspect he won't be that bad as Pittsburgh backup, but he could be playing quite a bit given Murray's injury history.
Nedved Petr
David Tomasek
Satastic
Nazi punks **** off
JaegerDice
The mark of my dignity shall scar thy DNA
- Dec 26, 2014
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I agree Niemi was never that great, but he was pretty much the reason the Blackhawks beat the Sharks in 4 games. Blackhawks were badly outplayed in 2 or 3 out of 4 of those games.
As far as the OP. He got old.
Rorschach
Who the f*** is Trevor Moore?
Let's see, they replace him with the Kings backup, go straight to the Final...
Seems to check out.
ColdSteel2
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- Aug 27, 2010
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Niemi was bad with Blackhawks and he was bad as a Sharks starter. He had too big a role for his skill level.
Maybe his skill level has gone down slightly, but he's never actually been any good.
Maybe his skill level has gone down slightly, but he's never actually been any good.
The difference was noticeable right away too. Imagine if the Sharks had replaced Nabokov with someone who wasn't swiss ****ing cheese back in 2011. Maybe they wouldn't have wasted 5 years of Thornton and Marleau in their primes and gone all the way.
