Do we overrate the value of the goalie, and if so, what does that mean for our Montreal Canadiens?

Kyle (@kyleroussel) -I would imagine this is going to be a very hot topic in Montreal, not only in this off-season, but especially as we inch closer to Carey Price’s cherry contract running out. We can’t envision this team without him, but what have we witnessed in the last few years?

1) Carey Price doesn’t finish seasons on ice, but rather on the IR. Yeah I know, it’s unfair to knock a guy for being hurt

2) Teams are reaching the Cup Final and winning it all with no-name goaltending. Sure Tim Thomas won as an elite, and Luongo was at the other end of the ice. Brodeur was there recently (though well past his prime). Lundqvist made it in the recent past. But Niemi has a ring. Michael freaking Leighton played in a Cup Final. Martin Jones and Matt Martin may turn out to be studs, but they aren’t stars today. Jonathan Quick has a couple of rings and he’s a slightly above average goalie (this year notwithstanding).

The Habs need to ask themselves whether they want to pay Price $10 million per season for 8 years when all signs point to being able to pay a guy half that and get better results given the right pieces elsewhere. If they buy in to the trend of not needing star goaltending, then we’ve got an interesting 2 years in front of us. If they decide that they can’t live without him, then I think we get more of the same for the rest of time. That may not be a bad thing and I’m certainly not suggesting that Bergevin dump Price today, but I think there’s some questions that need to be asked.

Antoine (@HabsoluteTruth) – I think it’s a pretty valid question to ask, especially after what we witnessed in this year’s playoffs. I think Murray and Jones are very good goalies, they’re definitely a step above the 2010 final two (Niemi & Leighton) but they’re nowhere near elite either. I think it speaks for itself that of the top 10 goalies in the league (Price, Holtby, Quick, Lundqvist, Schneider, Crawford, Luongo, Bishop, Rask, and Rinne), none made it very far in the playoffs, or played at all. I think in today’s era, the combination of goalies getting bigger and the ridiculous equipment sizes (although to their credit they also have a lot of knowledge of the game) make it so that any goalie can have stretches of looking godly. Hell Ben frigging Scrivens had a good stretch this season, and he’s terrible. Unless you’re a world class goalie like Price, Holtby, Quick or Schneider and you have the ability to steal your team games, like Price did in 2014-15,  goaltending is pretty overrated. How many goalies come out of the AHL and go through a hot streak or get a shutout in their first games? The goaltending position has definitely progressed a ton in the last decade with pioneers like Roy, Brodeur and Hasek inspiring kids to put on the pads, but I think we’ve reached a point where the 5-15 range of goalies are pretty much interchangeable and the success will come from the team in front of him.

But on the other side of the coin, we personally witnessed how crucial goaltending can be this year with Price’s injury and I think Flames fans will have a hard time telling you that goaltending is overrated after the season they just had. That being said,  unless drastic changes happen in the size of the goalie equipment or the nets, I think we’re slowly going to see teams go away from the ‘build from the net out’ approach that’s been preached since the start of the new millennium. I don’t think there’s a recipe to build a Stanley Cup winner, you just need one great player at each position in my opinion. I definitely see teams that will try to replicate the Pens, but at the end of the day, no team other than the Pens have Malkin AND Crosby.

Sean (@TheONeillFactor) – There is more than one path to the Stanley Cup. The NHL, as mentioned, is a copy-cat league; middling-teams tend to try and follow the model of recent winners, but often to limited success. In all honesty, when was the last time a contender-to-be replicated the blueprint established by another team? It’s pretty rare. Rather, successful teams tend to blaze their own path to immortality. Take a look at the teams that have won the Cup in the past 11 years

In ’06 the Hurricanes (somehow) won the Cup and everyone decided that foot-speed was the key to winning in the post-lockout NHL.

A year later, the Ducks rode a once-in-a-generation blueline to their first title and everyone decided that truculence was the secret ingredient.

I’m not really sure what the great takeaway was from the Wings Cup run in ’08 besides Nick Lidstrom, Pavel Datsyuk and Hank Zetterberg are all future Hall of Famers. That tends to help.

In ’09, Sidney Crosby won his first Stanley Cup and everyone agreed that the best path to the Cup was to tear everything down and rebuild through the draft.

Ditto the Blackhawks in 2010.

The Bruins won the cup in 2011 thanks to a generational talent on defence, a Hart-Trophy winning goalie and a suffocating defensive system.

The Kings won in 2012 by building down the middle (an elite goalie, an elite defenceman and an elite two-way centre).

The Blackhawks won in 2013 by keeping their core together (Toews, Kane, Keith, Hossa) and making shrewd cap moves around the margins.

The Kings repeated in 2014 despite finishing 8th in the West, leading many to believe that the regular season doesn’t really matter so long as you can turn it on in the playoffs.

2015 – Blackhawks again. The main lesson, I think, was that Johnny Toews is really good.

2016 – Goalies don’t matter! Load up on top-end offensive talent and out-possess the competition.

I do understand the argument – the emergence of possession stats does seem to indicate that winning without an elite goalie is not only possible, but arguably the norm. Nonetheless, goalies still tend to be overvalued, meaning that teams are allocating scarce resources on a position where equal value can be found with replacement-level players (or at least non-elite level players).

I think this is probably true for 25 teams in the league – there are, however, a handful of goalies who remain difference makers. Price (along with Lundqvist, Holtby, Schneider, and arguably Luongo and Rask) is in that group. If the Habs give up on Price, even if you can rationalize it, they’ll be spending the next 20 years looking for his replacement.

Keep Price and build from the crease out – it may not be in vogue now, but if the Habs do somehow win the Cup in the next few years, it will become the new model everyone tried to emulate.

CJ (@CJ_Casselman) – It’s hard to outscore mistakes, which is why the recent trend among Cup winners is sound defensive coverage. Among the previous 7seven Stanley Cup winners, they finished 6th, 1st, 1st, 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 5th in regular season goals against. That’s an average of 2.7 overall. Contrast that with goals for. Over the same seven years, the Cup winner has finished 3rd, 16th, 25th, 2nd, 29th, 8th and 3rd in goals for during the regular season for an overall average of 12.29.

With respect to goaltending, it is a critical component, but shouldn’t be solely relied upon for success. Great teams reduce shots and scoring chances, easing the strain on their goaltender. It is essential that this weakness is turned into a strength should Montreal hope to compete for a Cup. So much as the Canadiens require scoring help, they will benefit more from a sound defensive system with capable puck moving defencemen who can both skate the puck out of danger or can make a strong first pass. Afterall, hockey is a territorial game and the least amount of time that the puck is in your zone, the less likely it is that the opposition can create scoring chances.

What I believe is the takeaway from the Penguins Cup win is the premium teams must place on speed. Speed takes away a defenders time and space and forces poor decisions with the puck (Zubrus puck over the glass is just one example). Speed is the one major concern I have with the Habs defence. I don’t believe that Markov has the mobility to play 20+ minutes over the world cup, 82 game regular season and 3 months of playoff hockey. So, the issue is do you move Markov now (he’s a pending UFA) or do we wait and assess at the deadline? Either way, the Canadiens were at their best when they played with speed. Markov is still an exceptional talent, but as the pace increases I don’t believe either he or Emelin can keep up.

Damon (@DTA23) – I think the NHL playoffs are a very random exercise. When you look at how many games are decided by OT or a one goal margin it just goes to show how random they can be. I think goaltending is an extremely important component of winning in the NHL, but I believe in it only so much as it means that you’re goaltending can’t be a liability. You can’t have a goalie that gives up bad goals and submarines your chances of winning games. If you have a solid goalie I think your chances are just as good as if you have an elite goalie, because when it comes down to it, the randomness of the playoffs means lucky bounces will often determine who advances and who goes home. I don’t think the salary difference between the performance of an average goalie and and elite goalie is proportional.

That being said I don’t trust this team with making the right decisions with money, so I would say the bird in the hand is better than the two birds in the bush that Bergevin would get.

Antoine (@HabsoluteTruth) – Thank you Sean for going more in depth in what I was saying. There is no perfect formula to win the Cup. The teams who try to replicate championship teams often fall flat on their faces (see the Leafs under Burke). If I were GM of an NHL team, I guess the number one thing I would preach is patience. Everybody and their mothers said the Sharks’ window was done last year after they missed the playoffs and most fans wanted San Jose to start a rebuild this season. Wilson didn’t budge, made a few solid moves like adding Jones, Ward, Donskoi and Martin and next thing you know, his team came two wins away from winning the Stanley Cup for the first time. I think that’s what seperates us fans from great general managers, we don’t have the patience to manage a team, we want results and we want them NOW. Based on general opinion, the Pens should have traded one of Malkin or Crosby years ago after their numerous disappointments in the playoffs, yet here we are witnessing 71 & 87 lift their second Stanley Cup.

For all the fans who want Bergevin to trade the farm and more, they should look at the St. Louis Blues model rather than the New York Rangers. The Rangers did what many Habs fans want Bergevin to do and look where they stand. They have zero Cups, one or two interesting prospects, and that’s it. Based on reputable sources (Lebrun and Friedman) they’re thinking of starting a rebuild. For all the flack Bergevin gets, I don’t think his approach has been the wrong one.

Ian (@BoisvertIan) – You’d be fighting an uphill battle if you were trying to convince me goaltending doesn’t matter. Of course it matters. Without Carey Price, the Canadiens are a lottery team. That much we know. The argument that Martin Jones and Matt Murray are not elite goaltenders is somewhat reliant on the fact that they just got starting jobs in the NHL. Yes, they’re new starting goaltenders, but Jones was facing 40 shots nearly every game, and he always kept his team in the game. And maybe Jones and Murray become elite goaltenders. Ken Dryden once was a no name kid out of Cornell. Now he’s got his number retired by the Habs and is considered a legend of the game. Back then no one said, “Man this rookie just won the Cup and the Conn Smythe. This must mean that goaltending is an overrated position. Sorry Jacques Plante, your days in Toronto are over. Pack your bags.”

Of course you can’t just win based on goaltending. Otherwise, Montreal would have won in 2010 when Jaroslav Halak stopped 148 shots every night (okay, I’m exaggerating). The Canadiens now aren’t contenders because the team in front of him isn’t very good. The same can be said for Henrik Lundqvist and Tuukka Rask (no Cup as a starter), as their team’s aren’t very good anymore.

Is goaltending overrated? Maybe slightly, but I’m not going to pretend it’s not an important position. On some nights, your goalie needs to be your best player. If your goalie has to be your best player on most nights (see Carey Price), your team needs a shake up. But I still want the best goalie in my net no matter how much it costs. If he can steal one playoff game, one Cup Final game, it’s worth it.