Mad Dog

prefectly executed cross-slot onetimers would find broduer completely set and square and the shot would be smothered in his gear. THAT is what put him in a class above, not the fact he was able to lunge at a bunch of pucks and luckily have them deflect of the paddle of his stick.

But I am not talking about smothering good shots or catching one-timers. He was great at it, but so were many, many others who played the position. I am talking about winning games by himself, which he has done plenty of.

If you look back at the most recent goalies whose teams won the Cup, I am really not sure how man goalies we can say that about.

Fleury played well, and so did Tim Thomas, but both Pittsburgh and Boston had great all-around teams. Having their goalies play at the top of their games cirtainly helped, no doubt.

Giguire looked good, but the *team* in front of him made him look good.

Osgood had his moments, but he has a dynamite team who would've won with him or without him in net.

Both Ward and Khabibulin played some terrific hockey, and maybe won 1 or 2 games in the entire playoffs by themselves, but that was a team's effort more than anythying, and excellent coaching.

Even going back to the success of Tom Barrasso in Pittsburgh and Mike Richter in New York, again, both golaies were at the top of their games, they made difficult saves, but that was a full team effort.

Brodeur, I think, had to win more than 50% of games all by himslef - which is what I call "stealing games" - in order for the Devils to have any chance of keeping advancing from round to round, let alone winning the whole thing. He literally had to stand on his head just about every game because the team in front of him, while surely adequate, simply didn't have enough in their arsenal to hoist the Cup. That's the difference.

honestly, i don't agree with this. every goalie in the world makes saves he has no business making. head to the local rink tonight and watch a few games. each beer league goalie will have one or two stupid amazing saves at some point in each game. i could tell you stories about the OMG saves i have made over the years, stopping breakaways from my butt, diving and making saves with the paddle of my stick, rediculous gloves saves that i didn't even see, just waved my arm in the right direction at the right moment.

but.

it isn't the pull-it-out-of-your-ass saves that make a good goalie. its the consistency with which a goalie makes the saves he has every right making. watch those same beer league goalies tonight, and you'll see a ton of shots get through that they should have had. those are what makes them beer leaguers. as you go up the ranks of goaltending, the frequency of those goes away until you get to the top tier of NHL keepers, who almost never let innocent pucks in the net.

sorry, just a thing. people judge goalies on the wrong criteria, imo, and i wanted to pipe up. marty wasn't amazing because of that one crazy save he made. marty was amazing because he didn't leak; he was able to lock down all the routine plays, and if you were gonna beat him, you were going to have to work for it and execute perfectly.

this is why i get a little frustrated with people who want thier goalie to "steal a few games". that isn't what a goalie does. if the skaters in front of him allow the other team to put together the perfect play and the shooter is allowed to get off the perfect shot, the best goalie in the NHL and the worst goalie in your local D league have the same chance of tracking it down. which is to say: anyone can get lucky. the most you can ask of a goalie is not allow the unearned goal.

bryzgalov has allowed too many unearned goals, and that's what we should be on him about. not that he isn't making top 10 highlight reels.

Sorry Aziz for getting back to you late on this...

I have to COMPLETELY disagree with you on this point.

Marty was most certainly stealing games. I don't know how you can even argue about that. Watch his playoff performances. There were games when the Devils were badly outshot, outperformed, and outplayed. Again, people tend to give that team a credit for their incredible, flawless defense. And there is no doubt, Stevens, Neidermeyer and Daneyko, as well as the whole "trap" defense worked. But without Marty's making one sick save after another, I doubt they win even a single cup. He was winning games all by himself more often than not. I agree that he didn;t make many mistakes, but that can be said about many good goalies in the playoffs. You won't win Cup by your goalies simply making saves he is expected to make.

To the topic of this thread... I imagine the team is giving it some thoughts, but it's not that easy. There are multiple ramifications of making Bob #1, the most important is basically wasting the gigantic burden in the cap space resulting from Bryz' annual salary. You;ll have hard time justifying having a $6mil+ goalie sitting on the bench.

Secondly, are we really convinced Bob is at least no worse than Bryz? I am really not sure what the benefit of starting him more.

God, I respect Ed Snider for his passion and desire to win, but he really has to stop screwing with the team and sticking his nose into the team's affairs.

If you look all goals that was scored against bryz, so the most them are deflections, team is collapsed a front of the goalie and don't clear a rebounds. Same thing Bob. But Boston game is just showed they got to play all 60 min and no turn over’s any zone, because good team will score, as dallas didn't yesterday.

This my two cents on this.

But that's what separates a great goalie from average ones. As flawless as New Jersey's defense was made out to be, they *did* screw up, and quite often. But that's where Marty showed his brilliance. Watch the old tapes especially during the year they won teh Cup beating Dallas in the finals. He was making saves that he had no right making.

Now, of course, there is only one Marty and it would be hugely unfair to Bryz, or whoever else, to be compared with him. But can he at least sometimes make saves that are impossible to make? I mean...... at least once every game? Is that too much to expect from the $51 mil goalie?

For some reason I do care. Until he gets his game in shape I want him to just shut up

Yeah, I guess you're right. One needs to back up his yapping with his play. Somehow, though, I rarely pay attention to what players have to say. I didn't care much for what Richards said to the reporters while a big deal was made of it. After all, action speaks louder than words.

I really don't care how sane, crazy, half-crazy, emotional, etc. he is as long as he vastly improves on his 2.87 GAA and 0.9 save %.

@aziz

It's sad, but right now Bob already is a better goalie IMO, and has plenty of room for development. Bryz has plenty of room to improve, and he damn well better or he's going to hate earning every penny of that money cause his life will become unbearable.

Let's put it this way: at the very least, Bob is not playing *worse* than Bryz. And that, right there, is a huge problem. When we had Bob and Boucher competing for the #1 spot, OK..... But we shouldn't even be at the point where Bryz is competing with anybody for the #1 spot on the team. It should be automatic, but it's not because his play has been OK at best. Not horrendous, but OK. But we didn't sign him to give us a fair pefromance. We signed him to give us a performance of an elite goalie.

@aziz

Interesting read re: coverage and Bryz's weaknesses. But shouldn't the Flyers be as good as it gets on high-zone coverage and picking up a trailer? Take a look at their PK and how well it works. With the exception of Jagr and Briere all their forwards are fast and pretty good with their sticks on D. I understand having 2 wingers who are particularly soft on D doesn't help matters, and they play on different lines. But it's not asking much of either of them to stay with the late guy and to pressure the point. There will be breakdowns but nobody should be getting clear looks from the point or the top of the circles.

Does it really require Lavy addressing it? It's basic defensive zone coverage isn't it?

And I am not sure what puzzles/angers me more: Bryz's sporadic play or the Flyers' defensive struggles. I can't figure out how the group that features Timonen, Coburn, Carle, and Meszaros - with such a great combination of size, speed and strength - cannot be more effective in locking down on the players in their zone. I am puzzled by why this defensive group cannot consistently protect their blue line. Granted, Bryzgalov *must* play better. No two ways about it. But the D is not helping him nearly as much as they should.

Has he stolen ANY games this season?

The only thing he has stolen so far is $51 mil. No biggie!

Here is a thought that really makes me wanna gobble up Valium: Bryzgalov will count $5.67 million against the Flyers' cap until he is 40 years old.

I can't imagine how this mere thought cannot drive people to drinking.

@radoran

I see a pretty ugly ending to this marriage, myself. I really, REALLY want to be wrong here, but having seen Bryzgalov's play, my prediction is that he will implode in the playoffs, Laviolette will flip flop him and Bob, and with the team desperately needing a cap relief, he will be waved over the summer or during the training camp of 2012, and God only knows what will happen from there on, but I just can't see a happy ending to this. The best-case scenario is that maybe somehow, miraculously, they would be able to actually trade him, but I just can't see a team foolish enough to take on his ludicrous contract. But I am not sure if he has a NTC and NMC built into his contract, in which case he would have to wave those.

The Flyers *will* realize - if they haven't already - that he is not much of an upgrade over Bob and will try to right the mistake they made by trying to get rid of him at whatever cost they can.

This has a boiling mess written all over it.

Carey Price is getting there I think.

Very stricky for my liking, but not a bad choice. Again, there are quite a few of good goalies in the league. Price, Lundqvist, Luongo, Fleury, Rinne, Miller, Backstrom, and yes, even our own Bryzgalov, are in a category of good goalies. But in terms of great goalies, there are not many of those. In fact, as of right now, I only consider Tim Thomas a truly GREAT goaltender who has been great consistently and stands as an unquestioned #1 in this league as of this moment.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the ice is a guy earning his paycheck.

Yep. There were not many Martin Brodeurs in this league in the past or the present, but I really think Thomas comes as close as one can come to match the greatness of Marty.

I hate to be a voice of negativity, but it's becomeing clearer and clearer by day that Bryz is not the savior we were hoping he would be. Snider panicked and ordered Homer to get a goalie. A good cause, but problem is, there didn't happen to be a real #1 stud free agent golaie available so Homer had to settle for whoever was available.

We've got a lot of good young players, but we're stuck with mediocre goaltending for a longtime unless Bob somehow develops while not playing.

And even if Bob *does* develop rapidly, what are we going to do with our overpriced, overhyped, overrated #1? Who else is stupid enough to take him off our hands? Homer and Snider F**ked this one up pretty good.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the glass. The rinks used to all have the plexiglass and the boards would gived a little when the players hit them. Now they use the tempered glass and the boards don't budge on a hit.

A very good observation. But what about open ice hits that lead to head injuries? But in terms of hits along the bords, you are absolutely correct. I would think that *has* to contribute to concussions at least to some degree.

I can't even put this in words.

But if there *is* silver lining in all this is that it's early in the season. The Flyers don't need to rush these guys back as long as they at least play at 500 till they return.

@

Sure. But here is what's unclear to me. Do the players today miss time MAINLY because they fail that baseline test and/or being symptom-free for whatever number of days they are required to be symptom-free, or..... they miss time because they are just not in a position to play? If it's the later, then clearly concussions today are more severe and intense. And that's what I am wrestling with...

There's no mystery. Probably the main reason we see more concussions now is that there is simply a MUCH greater awareness and understanding of what these injuries are and what the consequences can be.

OK, but as I mentioned to Canoli, this only addresses awareness and diagnosis aspects. But how do we explain a mere fact that more players miss time with head injuries today?

Let's say there is a Flyers-Bruins game in 1973 and John McKenzie is going off the ice and doesn't come back. Then he misses 5-10 games with something weird. But whatever the docs or media or whoever else calls it, there would still be at least a hint that the player is out with a head injury. Instead, head injuries were virtually non-existant. That's why the only conclusion is that there *is* in fact a considerably, ridiculously more concussions now than 20-30 years ago. I don't know why this is even being debated.

The real question is why...

Hmm, maybe I missed it but I didn't read where you disagree with me. I know when you get a good knock to the head you're certainly aware of it. Only you truly know if you're right afterward, or if you're seriously hurt or whatever. But why are you so sure we would've heard about them [concussions in the '70s, '80s etc), "we" as in the fans, the media or anyone else?

Because a truly concussed player would miss time. Would have to.... You cannot - CANNOT - play with a concussion. If I pay you money and ask you not to eat for two days, you can do it. If I ask you not to sleep for few nights, you can do it. It will be hard on you, surely, but you can do it if you have stamina. But if I ask you to play at your normal level when you are concussed, you CANNOT do it. That is, if you are truly concussed.

That's why I say we would know. And it's normally more than one day. So when the player misses a significant time, how would that be possible to hide it. Clarke tried to hide it once with that whole Lindros saga; and I am not even saying he did it on purpose. Maybe he was mislead by the Flyers' medical staff. But we all know how that ended.

When, like you said, you have your bell rung, or you have whiplash, sure, you can play through it. But concussion? No sir. No job security, money, fame, image or anything else can make you play. You physically cannot. The symptoms are too severe for you to play. The player would be forced to miss time... and, as a result, that would've welled up to the surface. But we hardly heard of players missing time due to head injuries until literally the beginning of this century.

i'm right there with you, but i can't for the life of me figure out what that reason is.

The only thing I can think of is that players, today, have absolutely no respect for each other. Scott Stevens, for better or worse, essentially gave birth to these vicious hits to the head. And then you see more and more of similar type injuries. Perhaps players like Cook or Kunitz just really started polishing this particular skill with a goal to make it their mark. Who really knows.

Look at that Max Pacioretty's hit on Letang. That was a vicious, ferocious hit. I am not even talking right now about the legality of the hit. I am talking just about the sheer brutality and viciousness. I don't know - and nobody other than Pacioretty knows - if there was an intent to injure. The hit of Tucker on Kapanen that you are attaching here is in that same category: brutal, vicious, and nasty. There were certainly good, honest checks in the 70's and 80's, but I honestly don't remember so much of outright violance.

And I don't even know whether this violance is good or bad for the game. But what I *do* know is that I don't want the Lindroses, Savards, Crosbys, Letangs, and Giroux of the world end their careers so prematurely because of concussions. Something needs to be done. What exactly? I'd like to hope there are enough sharp people in the league who can figure that out.

What we're seeing today is a result of better diagnosis. It's true the players are bigger and faster now certainly. But I don't believe there are more concussions these days, they're just getting better at diagnosing the damage is all.

Maybe the baseline test is too rigorous and so we're seeing the "concussion" label tacked on to every headache. Maybe the diagnosis isn't actually better it's just more sensitive. I'd bet if we were diagnosing things 10 years ago the way we are today we'd see the same amount of "concussions" then as now.

don't you think?

I hear your point loud and clear, but I don't know if I completely agree with it. Here is why I don't think your theory is true.

When people are concussed, beleive me - they know there is something really wrong with them. Don't want to call it a concussion? Fine. I can see how 30 years ago, with sports neurology not being anywhere near the level it is now, people could misdiagnoze or not diagnoze concussion. But the player would know there is something wrong with him. In fact, look no further than what we are seing with Pronger. The first thing I read when this whole fiasco happened is he complained about some vague symptoms and said he "never felt like this before". Only *later* he was diagnozed with a concussion.

My point is, if the players in the 70's and 80's were concussed at the same rate as they are today, they would know it, and the media and we, fans, would hear about that. Again, we may not have been hearing the word concussion per se, but we would hear about these issues. They may've been referred to as head injuries, or something else, but we *would* hear about them. Injuries like knees, elbows, shoulders, groin, etc. were always there. But I've been watching hockey since the mid-70's, and I don't remember seing such an outburst of head injuries in hockey as I've seen over the last 10 years.

The baseline tests you are talking about certainly help with diagnosis to draw a red line under the word CONCUSSION. But the head injury is as clear as a day: you either have it or you don't. It's more than a bad headache. I had it and I can tell you: when you have a concussion, there is no doubt in your mind that there is something terribly wrong with you. Again, you may not know you are concussed. Hell, you may not even know what the word concussion even means. But rest assured, you *will* know you are not right and the last thing you will want to do is to step a foot on the ice.

Letang over Weber? I'm not seeing that.

No no, I am not comparing Letang with Weber. I am just using Letang's name to make a point that young quality d-men in this league are a rarity.

But purely hypothetically and for shits and giggles, let's say the Pens learn that Crosby is lost for the rest of the year, and we are in the similar situation with Pronger. The Flyers need to fill the void created by a great d-man and the Pens have a void created by a great forward. Both teams suddenly have needs. Would you trade JVR or Couturier and a 1st round (and something else) for Letang?

i don't disagree...but what changes?? a lot of these issues are not coming from egregious head shots, they're coming from weirdo follow-throughs into pronger's face, or accidental glancing blows to giroux's head, or incidental bumps to crosby as players turn to follow the play.

what i don't get is how every single tiny bit of contact to a player's head is now causing a concussion. guy sneezes too hard and he misses the next three weeks. wtf is going on that hockey players are now to a one made of paper mache? not to disrespect anyone, but who here hasn't had a knee to the head while playing hockey?

Giroux was a freak accident inflicted by the player of his own team. sh!t happens. But the rest are over-exuberant hits, elbows, and headshots. I don’t know…… but there’s gotta be a reason why when Clarke played concussions were almost unheard of, which is why many players even played without helmets, and now, like I said, it’s not even epidemics but pandemics. There's gotta be a reason for this ridiculoulsy increased number of concussions.

Maybe the rules have to be tighter, maybe the equipment needs to be strengthened…. I really don’t know. But I am sick to my stomach with a very thought of not being able to watch Crosby or Giroux play this game.

The Flyers' medical stuff is completely incompetent. They have been proving it over and over again.

But the bigger issue is the growing number and frequency of concussions in the NHL. There have to be changes made.

Great. This is really becoming pandemic. The league has to do step in and do something radical before they lose half of the players to the retirement. Ridiculous.