Sielski: Do Flyers really need a franchise goalie to win?
The latest goaltender to shepherd his team to the Stanley Cup Finals hadn't been a full-time starter in the NHL until this season and has a name that sounds like a mutual-fund firm. Martin Jones is 26 years old, stands 6-foot-4, and had appeared in all of
The latest goaltender to shepherd his team to the Stanley Cup Finals hadn't been a full-time starter in the NHL until this season and has a name that sounds like a mutual-fund firm. Martin Jones is 26 years old, stands 6-foot-4, and had appeared in all of 20 games for the Los Angeles Kings before the San Jose Sharks acquired him in a trade last June (after he spent four days as a Boston Bruin). The Sharks immediately made him their No. 1 goalie. He played 65 regular-season games and has started all 18 of their playoff games, and his team is in the Finals for the first time in its 24 years of existence. The assumption is natural: The Sharks finally found their franchise goalie. It must be so.
For many of the 41 years that have passed since they last won a Stanley Cup, the Flyers failed in that all-important search. They signed John Vanbiesbrouck instead of Mike Richter or Curtis Joseph. They tried Roman Cechmanek and Robert Esche. They got close in 2010, only to have Michael Leighton let that short-side shot by Patrick Kane slip under his pads in overtime. They seem, at first glance, to have an unsettled situation at the position now as they press on with general manager Ron Hextall's rebuild. Did Michal Neuvirth, with his terrific postseason performance, establish himself as the clear choice to be the starter next season? Should the Flyers trade Steve Mason? And when does prospect Anthony Stolarz get his shot?
But if anything, the Sharks' journey to the Finals and the goaltending situations of their other three teams to reach the semifinals - the St. Louis Blues, the Pittsburgh Penguins, and the Tampa Bay Lightning - ought to be reassuring to the Flyers. Both the Blues and the Penguins tried the same tactic: benching their starters, then reinserting them into the lineup after one game. The Lightning lost Ben Bishop, a Vezina Trophy finalist, to an injury in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals and still had a chance to win the series Thursday night in Game 7 with backup Andrei Vasilevskiy. And though Jones may very well turn out to be the second coming of Jacques Plante, for the moment he serves as the latest needle to puncture a conventional presumption: If it's to have a bona fide shot of winning a championship, an NHL team must have a "franchise goalie," however one defines the term, or a "hot goalie" who just happens to have saved his best for springtime.
It's not as if that hallowed hockey precept were never true. The Flyers of the mid-1970s needed Bernie Parent. The New Jersey Devils of 1993-2003 needed Martin Brodeur. Patrick Roy, Ed Belfour, Dominik Hasek - they were indispensable. It's just that the precept isn't necessarily true anymore. There is some anecdotal evidence of this, to be sure: The Chicago Blackhawks have advanced to the conference finals five times and won three Cups since 2008, and Kane, Jonathan Toews, Duncan Keith, and Brent Seabrook are far more responsible for that excellence than Nikolai Khabibulin, Antti Niemi, or Corey Crawford is. But the Blackhawks' success doesn't prove that an NHL team can win despite its mediocre goaltenders. It does something different: It helps to show how few mediocre goaltenders there are anymore.
"Ten, 15 years ago you had your top guys - five, six guys who really stood out - and then there was a gap," New York Rangers goaltender Henrik Lundqvist once said. "But now, you have so many good goalies coming into the league. The difference between No. 20 and 25 and No. 3 and 4 is not that big anymore."
Just look at the trends. In 2005-2006, the average save percentage among NHL goaltenders was .901. In each of the last two seasons, it was .915. Training and instruction at the position have improved over time. "Goaltending is now a teachable system," Flyers TV analyst Bill Clement once said. "It's getting more technically perfect."
Meanwhile, all modern goaltenders seem to have been created from the same physical mold. They're bigger and more athletic than ever. Of the 92 goalies who appeared in at least one NHL game during the 2015-16 regular season, 87 were at least 6 feet tall. In terms of size and skill, goalies these days are practically interchangeable. (For the record, Neuvirth is 6-1, Mason is 6-4, and Stolarz is 6-6.)
Which brings us back to Martin Jones. His performance during these playoffs (.919 save percentage) hasn't been markedly better than his performance during the regular season (.918). He hasn't made the difference for the Sharks. His teammates have. The Flyers used to make that argument a lot - that a franchise goalie was a luxury but not a necessity, that the skaters in front of him always mattered more. They just made it in the wrong era. Nowadays, they would probably be right. They can find a goalie. The trick will be finding everything else.
@MikeSielski