Leachmeister2000 said:
Hey don't get me wrong, I hate Pogge because he's a Leafs prospect, but when you're a goalie into a tournament with a group of inexperienced guys supporting you, I don't care what you say, but that guy has to be good to backstop his team to a gold medal. Sure the defense played a huge part in that but seriously, go back to the threads started before the tournament and you'll see the exorbitant number of posters that doubted the defensive core. Go on.
I still fail to see how the
expectations on the defence leading up to the tournament have
any bearing on Pogge. It wouldn't matter if every poster registered for this board thought that the Canadian defence was too inexperienced and wouldn't step up. The fact that they did makes all the pre-tournament opinions irrelevant. In fact, even if the defence did falter as was feared, the predictions themselves become irrelevant once events actually unfold.
I was never saying that Pogge isn't good. I never said that he didn't deserve the recognition he got for helping lead Canada to gold. I never said he was riding the coattails of the rest of the team to victory. I was (and still am) saying that there are people who act like Pogge singlehandedly won the tournament for Canada, and that he's now vaulted to the head of the class for goalie prospects.
Canada won because the forwards scored, the defense stopped the opposition, and Pogge stopped what got through. People say that this team Canada lacked firepower, but they never failed to score less than 3 goals. No other team in the tournament did that. Only twice did Canada have to win a game by a single goal margin. Pogge didn't need to be spectacular, just solid. And solid is exactly what he was. He led the tournament in save %, but not by a ton (0.02%), and tied for 2nd in GAA He might have been the only goalie to play every single minute of the tournament for his team, but he faced less shots than goalies who played as much as 15% less of the tournament. As I said, he was very good, but it's not like he was Jesus on skates.
I'm not going to get into ranking the prospects, since I havent' seen enough of every one of them to make a good comparison. I just want to point out the fallacy of putting Pogge on the highest pedestal.