Goaltender of the Future

With Slovakia's tight win based on Jaroslav Halak's tight goaltending versus Russia, the goaltending debate for the Habs is picking up so much steam its beginning to scald. The problem is most armchair observers seem to be using logic reminiscent of a certain San Jose Sharks pro scout.

The Montreal Canadiens are currently in eighth place in the Eastern Conference, one point ahead of Tampa Bay (who have two games in hand) and two ahead of the New York Rangers who hold one game in hand. We may just make the playoffs this year, and if we do, we'd likely want the strong goalie we had for much of the season to try and keep us in against Washington, New Jersey, or whoever we get seeded against.
Reality however, states we'll likely make a first round exit unless we perform a miraculous upset. Our team has been too up and down to really be consistent - our longest winning streak all season is only three games. In that case we need to be focused as much on the future of the franchise, and which goaltender we hold on to. No matter what Pierre Gauthier thinks, both of our goalies are RFA at the end of the season and we really can't afford to have them both alongside a resigned Thomas Plekanec.

And this is why we need to resign Carey Price and trade Jaroslav Halak.
I'm sure right now there's coffee hitting your monitor not unlike a Jason Blake wrist shot to the chest of a goaltender on those words, but hear me out. Price has had certain flashes of brilliance this year, and is statistically better in save% than Olympian Marc-Andre Fleury, Ottawa savior Brian Elliot, LA starter Jonathan Quick, and most other hyped up underachievers (I'm looking at you, both Philedelphia goaltenders, all three goaltenders to suit up for the Maple Leafs this season, Nicklas Backstrom, and both Nashville goalies). Admitted Halak's .923 is nicer than Price's .911 but it's not like Price is making a huge gap of less saves - especially as he's generally been put in following a Halak loss, suggesting the team wasn't bringing much effort anyway (further proven by Price's GAA being higher than goaltenders with worse save percentages, though still a reasonable though not outstanding 2.81).
So Price can compete, he just isn't playing as well as Halak right now. But here's where the future comes in.

Halak is a positionally sound goalie, will be 25 at the end of the season, has calm emotions and fast reflexes. His weaknesses are controlling the puck, and his size ( 5'11 is short for a goaltender). While reflexes don't degrade quickly, it's unlikely they will ever improve noticeably, and as he's already positionally sound there's not a whole lot of upward motion. Halak can practice with the puck but he's never going to get four inches taller.

Price, 22, is excellent with the puck (can you name four goaltenders better than him with the puck?), 6'3, and has just as sharp reflexes. His biggest issues are a weak glove hand (that is nonetheless greatly overplayed), some positional awareness issues, and having some difficulty dealing with the emotional stress of working in the Montreal environment. In short he's immature. Funny thing is, in the league, there aren't a whole lot of mature 22 year old goaltenders - let alone 22 year old goaltenders to begin with. He calms down and works on his positioning, and he's got a clear advantage on Jaroslav, who has effectively reached his ceiling. Is it really a gamble to say that Price will be a different player at 24 than he is at 22?

Can we risk giving up that potential to try to hold on to our eighth place seed this season?
Can we risk not getting any return for our current hot goaltender?

A few random thoughts and the, er, Gainey Group?

Quick edit just after posting; it seems Shawn Belle will be debuting with the Habs this Thursday. Should be interesting.

It's been a long week and a half since I last wrote.
Montreal has gone 0-3 since then, and while it's still great to be ahead of Toronto in the division, I feel much dirtier having conceeded a point to them rather than having gained two at their expense. Having the same record as Boston is some solace, but there's still a long season ahead of us.

On that note, I think it's important we all remember that. As rough as we look now, we showed good drive against Calgary, and we showed we can create a strong offense against Edmonton rebounding after a disgusting embarassment that I can no longer remember due to the quantity of gin it made me reach for. We have seventy-seven games left. If we can get 89 points out of them we'll be on the cusp of the playoffs and that'll have already exceeded the expectations of some. Especially as we showed, while we're not brilliant, we can survive without Andrei Markov.

Laraque asked politely to have Number 27, as he's worn it everywhere he's played that didn't have a Russian star wearing it already. Does BGL really want to be that much more disliked by segments of the fanbase? Somehow I don't think it's occured to him that he's kind of slow, and not very good at hockey compared to last season's leading scorer and primary puck-dangler.

Speaking of ol' Alexei, Ottawa rolls into town this Thursday for our home opener. I wonder who will draw more boos - him or Laraque? (Spoiler: Laraque)



If you've found this blog you probably were linked to it directly by me or via a #habs post on twitter. This is a problem not for my hit counts as I don't care, but because it's really hard for Habs writers to be noticed. If you follow the Leafs blogging network they have what they call the "Barilkosphere" where notable bloggers are linked to each other via sidebar and everyone tends to follow each other's content. This already happens to a certain extent in the Habs world with Habs Inside/Out tending to link to interesting articles they stumble upon; though HI/O is sponsered by The Gazette and I doubt could spearhead any kind of formal initiative for Habs fans if only due to the fact that there may be a commercial liability issue. Eric Engels also gives great shout-outs to other bloggers from time to time. The point is, it would be great if an initiative to 'tighten' the Habs online writing community together started out. I'm not a particularly talented writer and have next to no readerbase so I don't really have a part in pushing myself to be listed, but I'd do anything I can to make something like this happen. If you're a contributor from one of the big Habs blogs out there [Eric Engels, Lions in Winter, Daily Hab-It, the aformentioned HabsInside/Out or any other Habs writer interested in this] just leave a comment and we can talk via email or anything towards a sort of 'network' for us. As my sidebar says, I'm a coder with a lot of time on my hands so I'd be more than willing to do the gruntwork to make something happen, just as long as we have people interested and behind it.