Who is the worst backup the leafs have had in recent years?

[Prominence]

Sparks was bad, but at least he won 1 or 2 games. Even got a shutout in his first game in the nhl. Enroth was worse and ended the season with .872 while sparks ended his last season with .902.

 

[Jozay]

It was by far Enroth.

 

[Welsh Maple Leaf]

Sparks record after 5 games last year.

4-1-0 and had a shutout.

Imagine if the leafs record was 13-3-2. We'd be looking up the records for who was the last city to have NBA and NHL championships in back to back years.

How he has the most votes and comfortably Is a joke.

He was poor but he wasn’t the worst.

 

[Leafs87]

Vesa Toskala.

He was the worst starter actually unfortunately

 

[hoglund]

How he has the most votes and comfortably Is a joke.

He was poor but he wasn’t the worst.

It's because he's one of the most recent backups and it's easier to remember

 

[LeafsOHLRangers98]

Enroth was significantly worse than all of them. People just hate Sparks so much lol

 

[Teeder Keon]

Kaskisuo

 

[MattySnipes]

Hard to blame the backups under Babcock. They've been tasked with a very big ask. To defend a team that is tired, on a second of a back-to-back (x14). You won't take part in any of the team's remaining games.

I'd probably go with a backup before Babcock was here. I'm gonna go with Glenn Healy.

 

[Matthews34]

I’ve never seen so much attention paid to a position that only plays 20-25 games a year. Things must too good in Leaf land.

 

[AvroArrow]

I think Sparks won at least one game in a year, Hutchinson here.

 

[nuck]

Sparks was so much more effective than Hutchinson is/was.
You guys might not like him, and no one was ever in love with him, but he's hands down a better goalie than Hutchinson.

Just by the shear numbers, Sparks allowed a goal and a half less per game.

That just puts in perspective how bad hutch is.


For me this is a toss up between Enroth and Hutchinson. I'm pretty sure Enroth is literally scared of the puck.

Its the tiny sample with Hutch and Enroth. If they got their 15 games I think it could have been better for both. Hutch's history says he should be substantially better, if not necessarily good.

Picking Sparks is partly the recency bias for some people, and to some the bitterness of letting McBackup go instead. Plus the brutal freefall for Matthews lineup in front of him 15-16. You have to give him credit for better results than some others so not close to being the worst IMO, but he did have a sketchy way of winning.

Like qqaz said, even when he had good results, it didn't look right. His 8 best starts he had something like a .940s% and the same with his relief appearances. Then his 8 bad games he was like .850s% but he sort of looked the same way as when he won except the bad rebounds were costing him and the stretch saves weren't quite there. An AHL beast and he is doing it there again this year but you can't get away with the same technical issues in the show as in the minors.

I went with the 10-11 Monster who was .890s% to Reimer's .921s% that season. They were possibly a playoff team if they split his starts with Riemer and Giggy.

 

[Le Cobra]

Whenever Sparks was in net and made a save his positioning was poor and his save selection was frightening like it made me panic. At least Hutch had better save selection it’s his positioning that suffers and his save selection on the second chances that are not great. Hutch has way better defense in front of him now compared to Sparks but besides Sparks’ debut he was not a goalie I had much confidence in and I suspect neither did the leafs

 

[Zybalto]

Sparks over a whole season had slightly below average backup numbers.

The Leafs must have had a ton of worse backups than him.

 

[IPS]

Vesa Toskalol

 

[Ashdown2]

lots of recency bias on this one.
sparks was by far not the worst. unless you started watching hockey last year. even then hutch was worse then sparks

 

[RaFe]

I just miss having McBackup in net and although he's not putting up good numbers at the moment at least I felt he was reliable.
Since he's not here I would love to see Babcock switch just once in a while when going back2back and have Andersen play the second.
Babcocks system makes it way too difficult for any backup goalie to succeed.
We need a a good onboarding otherwise we'll just witness another backup failure.

Toskala will receive my vote. Not being the worst performing goalie on the list - but I did have some expectations and he came short.
Didn't expect anything spectacular from neither Hutch or Sparks just feeling a little sorry for especially Hutch that he really didn't make it.

 

[Twowingcantfly]

Cant comment on last 10 years but, Justin Poggie was. Rask was traded away to make room for Poggie. Worst goaltending move ever

 

[ACC1224]

Justin Poggie was. Rask was traded away to make room for Poggie. Worst goaltending move ever

Rask was the price to bring in Raycroft.
He wasn't moved to make room for Pogge.

 

[Twowingcantfly]

Rask was the price to bring in Raycroft.
He wasn't moved to make room for Pogge.

Regardless. How can a team have a generational goalie in their midst and not know it??

 

[ACC1224]

Regardless. How can a team have a generational goalie in their midst and not know it??

Patience wasn't one of their virtues.

 

[hoglund]

Kaskisuo

how do we even know how good or bad he is? Give him a chance.

 

[SeaOfBlue]

Decided not to go with Gustavsson or Toskala because our teams were brutal back then. But yeah they weren't great.

A bit unfair to judge Hutch or Enroth based on small sample size, but there was a good reason for them playing few games. I ultimately picked Enroth because I believe the Leafs gave him better efforts than they did Hutch and he played easier teams, but neither deserved to receive more chances than they received before getting waived.

Sparks and Scrivens shouldn't even be on the list, and it's absolutely laughable that Sparks has almost 40% of the total votes right now... Shows how irrational many fans on here can be. Sparks was significantly better than both Hutch and Enroth.

 

[SeaOfBlue]

Funny, 2 of the guys I considered, Sparks and Hutch, are almost the polar opposite of each other.

Hutch had such bad numbers. He was statistically terrible, and he was rightly waived. But he never looked too bad in-game, and most of his losses were because the team gave up on him.

Sparks had almost ok numbers. Especially earlier last season, he got a few wins and everything. But watching him play was laughable. He was clearly out of his league, and the team just carried him to a few W's.

Both are/were bad. I went with Sparks. Could have picked Enroth, also.

He looked pretty bad in game too, and the team never gave up on him either. They did not play amazing, but it was no different than Sparks. Hutch just let the team down.

 

[SeaOfBlue]

Try and tell any scout or goalie coach Sparks is better than Hutchinson. When they stop laughing, hopefully you’ve got more than a single stat that’s influenced by team play to support this.


Sparks has never been an NHL goalie and anyone who knows about this thing was saying it before, during, and after they waived Curtis McElhinney.

Sparks, by a landslide.

Toskala is not even close to the worst. He was also a starter.

Sparks is the worst and it’s not close.

Now I know for certain that Sparks was by far not the worst out of this bunch.

 

[Teeder Keon]

how do we even know how good or bad he is? Give him a chance.

only making light of our recent situations regarding back up goaltending
You know loosening up a bit around here
That’s all