News Article Timonen on difference between Flyers and Rangers: “The goalie”

[pensuck]

Yeah... Timo's indictment of the goaltenders loses quite a lot of power after seeing him directly blow his coverage on at least one of those goals today.

Like I said before, the goalies this year have been a huge dissappointment to say the least. But he can't call out the goalie when his

own defensive unit has been subpar. You can really see the difference when we play a good unit.

[pensuck]

i disagree. there isn't any way to really count them out and compare to anyone else, but i don't think the flyers are particularly guilty of giving up quality chances. i mean, each time you see tim thomas making an amazing save, the bruins gave up a quality chance. each time you go, "holy crap lundqvist is awesome," it was because the rag's d let someone put a real tester on him. the only real difference is our goaltending hasn't been making the amazing saves thomas and lundqvist have.

Who had the "better quality" scoring chances today? You're also camparing 2 of the best goalies in the league to ours. Like I said b4 if we had the Bruins or Rags d it would be a different story. The goalies arent the only problem here.

[aziz]

i'm not comparing any goalies to anyone's. i'm saying that we spend a lot of time talking about how awesome some of these goalies around the league are, and rightfully so...but an awesome goalie is only important if a defense is giving up quality scoring opportunities that he has to shut down. the discussion around here tends to act like boston, NYR, etc's defenses are ultimate, but the fact that lundqvist and thomas are difference makers for their teams means that their defenses require the goalie to make a difference.

today, honestly, lundqvist didn't have to make a difference, i admit and agree. that hasn't been the case in other games the flyers have played against them this season, but today, yeah, they locked it down. today, the rags played a very effective defensive game. that doesn't just mean their 6 dmen played well, it means 18 skaters played defense at a high level. as opposed to the flyers today, they played a 3-man defensive game all afternoon, and paid a price for that. very rarely were the wingers dropping below the tops of the defensive faceoff circles, frequently standing on the far side of the rag's point men. that left 2 guys uncovered low, and the constant outnumbered situations in front of the net showed it.

imo, the issue isn't the defensemen, it's the lack (or at least inconsistency) of a cohesive 5 man defensive approach. couple a pair for forwards waiting for the quick breakout with a couple rookie dmen who were not sharp with their outlets, and bob being less than outstanding, and the flyers didn't stand a chance. adding a single elite dman, or even adding 6 elite dmen, won't change that. if the opposing team is able to maintain pressure deep in your zone, you have to have all hands on deck picking up checks. if that doesn't happen, wins don't happen. i don't care what names you have on the back of your defensemens' jerseys.

Edited February 12, 2012 by aziz

[pensuck]

I agree. The entire team needs to play as 1 defensively no matter who we have. They still have time to get it down but teams are gaining on them big time.

They haven't gotten into last years freefall yet so I have hope.

You really can't blame the Flyers. they went out and got 1 of the better goalies out there.

Who would've thought he would be playing like this... I wanted them to sign Voukon. Not sure how that would have worked out either.