darth_henning

Russell with 4 points in 2 games since returning from injury. Maybe a few games in sick bay was what he needed to get back to form? Things are starting to come together. Finally.

I think its too early to write off Ortio as having a future with the club. Maybe not as a starter, but in some roll. No he didn't play well before being sent down, but with what, 3 games in a year? I don't think any goalie will play well. With more consistent starts since being sent down he's looking good again. That said, we still need a #1 or 1a depending how Ortio looks next year (or later this year). Ramo is serviceable, but league average. Varlamov or Anderson would be my preferences to target this off-season.

I think its a little early to say. One bad game, two good ones. Not enough of a sample size. With Ramo finally playing decently, and Hiller surviving his return, I expect we run with the current tandem till TDL with Ramo taking the load. As long as the results stay the same I'm ok with that. Ortio I think gets a solid shot next year as I expect Hiller to be gone for sure and Ramo to be 50/50 at best for retention.

Oh I fully agree on that. That was my point in my original post. I think I must have misunderstood what you mean somehow. Goaltending's massive decline is certainly the main issue in my mind. But Wideman and Russell have also blown a lot more of their defensive assignments than last year. Russell may not have taken the man, but he took the shot. That doesn't happen as much. Maybe because teams are ready for him, or maybe because he's worse. Wideman in particular though is losing guys WAY too often. Both are issues. Goaltending is more of an issue

They weren't a top pairing by any means. Not consistently. But they were playing at the level of a good second pairing especially after Gio went down. They stepped up a lot. That was in front of league average goaltending. You can't say that goaltending was 'saving them' when that's the case. Problem is this year they've run out of gas and aren't even playing as an average second pairing. (I know they're not together, but still using that as an aggregate comparison before someone comments on that)

There are a number of problems this year no question. Hudler has fallen off the wagon for no apparent reason. Depth scoring has dried up. Depth defence is not playing like it should Goaltending. That said, Gaudreau-Monahan and Bennett-Frolick look like solid top 6 players. Should Hudler regain form or Jones keep up his pace, we have a serviceable top 6 that needs a couple upgrades. Poirier might be one of those pieces. There are other guys in the A and juior who may be the other. Depth scoring is going to be an issue with Bollig and Raymond popping in and out of the lineup. Granlund, Ferland, Jooris are all fighting it right now. The return of Bouma will I think help significantly in the bottom six. (heck, he may help our top 6 if he plays up to last season, but that's iffy at best) Even if not, there are a lot of bodies in junior who will get shots next year once we make some space. The forward troubles aren't actually that bad, and can be solved in house. Next lets look at D. Gio isn't playing as well as last year, but if coming off major surgery and seems to be consistently improving. Brodie has done well. Hamilton had a very rough start (due in large part to his pairing) but is consistently improving as well. That's a solid top 3. The problem is that Wideman and Russell have gone from a good second pairing, that could play as first pairing at times, to an average 3rd pairing or worse. Engellend has actually looked like a solid 3rd pairing guy. I hated him last season, but at this point I'm kinda a fan. Go figure. We can address that a couple ways. Maybe via trade for Hamonic, but more likely in house. Kulak, Nakladal, Morrison and Wotherspoon are all in positions to make the jump to NHL positions with various abilities. Kulak looked VERYgood while he was here. So our D issues can be solved in house. Goaltending cannot be. The only starter we have is Gillies, and he's what, 2 or 3 years away? Ortio has potential, but has not looked good following his extended absence. Right now, we're actually sitting at 25th in goals for. But there's only a 10 goal difference behind Winnipeg in 10th place. Not great, but with decent goaltending, serviceable. We are dead last in goals against against. By 10. 25 behind 10th place. Scoring is a bit of an issue. Goaltending is a HUGE issue. We are one of THREE teams with a collective save percentage below 90% again in dead last. Put in some leage-average goal-tending, no we're not blowing it away, but that's a difference of about 7 goals over the season. That's three wins. That puts us in a playoff position. We've had 17 games with 4 or more goal scored against us. We've won 3 of those. By contrast we've had 8 games with 3 or fewer goals scored against us. We've won 6 of those. Which means in 2/3 of our games, the goalie is letting in WAY too much. Sure, some of that is defense. But a lot of that is goaltending as well.

Ramo is finally performing around league average. At this point I'd ride him until he either gets blown out (probably about game 5 of his current run with his history), or a back to back. Right now he's giving us a chance to win with a decent amount of scoring, so lets hope we can keep that up and make up some ground in the race.

Ramo is the first goalie to turn in a solid statistical performance this season. I think that alone gives him the right to have a few games in a row to see if its sustainable. Would I prefer Ortio getting the start? Sure. But as long as we have someone consistently between the pipes I'm ok with that.

Hopefully we'll start seeing more of Ortio now that we finally might be getting the offence going. Still time to turn this season around so long as we stop losing in bunches.

Ortio basically has to stand on his head to get a win, since he essentially can't allow more than 1 goal if the team is going to win. He's capable of doing it, but the guy in front of him do have to start scoring at some point.

I don't think that Waving a goalie is meant to show that goaltending is the central problem. Its making space to bring up someone else so they have the ability to start sitting people. With Smid back, they now have 7d (soon to be 8) that they can sit people who are playing badly. We still can only sit 1 forward at a time. We need more bodies so we can take the underperformers out for a game to send a message and still ice a team. This is just the first step if people don't start stepping up.

There are two back-to-backs next week. Red Wings may be Hiller's last chance to show he can be the starter. Hartley may be saving Ortio for 3 games next week (one of each back to back and Wednesday) That's my best guess at this point. But man we could be 1-10 at the end of next week if things don't improve.

Ramo has the better save% but worse GAA Hiller has the worse save % but fewer GA. I guess they were focusing on GAA since the % was only about a % difference, and once you're under 90, that doesn't matter that much over 3 games.

We have now been scored on 5 (or more) times in most of our games. Can we FINALLY try Ortio now? Neither Hiller or Ramo is getting it done. Maybe if we had a goalie we could trust the rest of the team might pick it up. Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.

Admittedly Hiller still didn't get any goal support from the team in front of him, but man. That should have been a way closer game. Ortio needs to get a start and see what he can do.

At this point we're not losing because of the goaltending. We're losing because we're not scoring. Outside of the first game against Vancouver, the tenders have been the highlight of the team's play and kept us in it. we've scored 7 goals in regulation in 4 games. We currently have the 6th fewest in the league (Anaheim has a total of 1 so we're not the only ones struggling) Goals against is also tied for 5th worst. But knock off the 5 from the first game and we jump all the way to a tie for 7th best. Its not the goaltending that is killing us right now. I want to see what Ortio can do and get him play time, But its not because the others are failing to get it done. But maybe the team will play better in front of Ortio? If they don't, it doesn't matter who we put in net.

I presume that we kept all three with the expectation of moving one of the vets, but other teams were more interested in snagging Ortio (or maybe even Gillies) if they wanted to trade at all. Which leaves us in a bad situation. Sending Ortio down is a bad idea because a) Gillies needs play time he'll almost certainly not pass waivers Sending Ramo or Hiller down is utterly non-nonsensical (can we even?) as if we're keeping them they're the ones with experience and if we're trading them we need them to play to up their trade value (which right now isn't great based on the first 3 games). Ottawa might need a goalie with Hamburgler out? Islanders and Sabers also look like they'r ehurting in goal

On the "What does Buffalo have that we want" front, what about: Raymond (1 mil retained) + Ramo (or Hiller) FOR Sam Reinheart OR Zemgus Girgensons Sam is a center, but has been playing RW. Same for Girgensons. Sam is 19 and Zemgus is 21 so both fit our rebuild of the team, and sees like there's decent potential for both (add in Frolick Jooris and Poirier and we'd have RW set up) Highly doubt that they'd give either up, (OK, lets be honest they never would for that) but while we're wildly speculating....

We were outshot 44-30. Only the best goalies in the league would win that game, and even they'd need us to score more than one. Did Ramo let in a couple questionable goals? Yes. But he had at least 3 major stops. Trade those off and you're looking at the same score. Should we try another goalie next game? Sure. if for no reason other than keeping them all fresh and seeing what we have. But is this loss on Ramo? not at all. The whole team played poorly outside of the top line. We started off well but progressively faded through the game. Hopefully a bad game rather than predictive.

Personally I prefer that BT has been keeping the information about trades and signings quiet. It leads to less fruitless speculation and media circus surrounding our players and distracting them from their point of being here: Winning games. I quite approve. Also, I think he's definitely improved massively this off season. Personally, I think he made a few decisions last off-season that suggest that he didn't have a lot of faith in our young players and gave out a few contracts at too high of a dollar value and term to ride out a long (well not compared to Edmonton I guess) rebuild. That said, none of us really expected the growth last season, r the optimism we'd be going into this season , so the weren't bad decisions, just not the best because they give us less flexibility than we need going forward. This off-season though, he's done an unquestionably excellent job. We gave up essentially nothing for two big upgrades in our top 6 and top 4. Hard to question that. Then add in signing Gio for a reasonable contract and term, at a price lower than pretty much any of us expected, and securing Ferland and Bouma for the near future, and it would be hard to ask for a better summer. This year will be interesting to watch to see if he can keep all the key pieces of the team and keep under the cap next year.

Looks like we're starting with Ramo and Hiller as backup. Ortio scratched: http://www.nhl.com/ice/blogpost.htm?id=41657&navid=nhl:topheads Will be interesting to see how long this setup lasts.

GROAN Given that both Raymond and Byron are on waivers to go down, it seems pretty certain we're starting with three goalies to give Ortio a chance.

It certainly hurt his stats, but I'd still say he's had the best games of our goalies in the pre-season. It does show he's not ready as a starter, but I don't think it means he's not NHL ready. Its also pretty important to note that the only NHL-experienced d-man in front of him was Engellend. That's going to hurt any goalie's stats.

Ortio has, on the basis of an admittedly tiny sample, the most promise of the three of them over last year and this pre-season. Those numbers may (likely?) not be representative of how he will play long term, but are an encouraging sign. However, he also has the least experience, and probably can't be thrust into a number 1 role at the start of this season. He may well take that position by the end of the season (like Gaudreau took #1 LW last season), but only time will tell. To me, that means dealing Hiller or Ramo. I don't like keeping three goalies, even if it isn't clear who the real #1 is. Hiller probably has the higher return, and it would look a little bad to trade Ramo after re-signing him over the summer, but there isn't really space to demote him. But by contrast, Hiller is also the most reliable of the three historically.

The arena may not add all that much to the city's development long term, but it will accelerate the rate at which those projects get completed since there will be a catalyst to redevelop the west village sooner. However, the money is going to be an issue. The Flames/Tickets are paying half the cost. the 200mil for the fieldhouse frm the city should be a given since that is included. Its the remaining 250mil that the flames will need to accept that they may have to pay for as well. It isn't realistic to include the infrastructure redesign and the creosote cost inthe arena cost though. No development will take place in the west village without that being done. The cost will only go up over time, and the city/province/tapayers will have to deal with it. Unless we want that to be a permanant car lot, then there's no choice.