digitaljohn88

Yes, 10/20 career, absolutely no shot. I'll take the 50/50 any day over the s*** that just happened.

awesome. 3 on 1 to deny 400 .

vs St Louis on Wednesday would be a perfect way to get 400. Worst case scenario, I'm sure Babcock would toss Osgood in at home on New Year's Even against the Isles for the free win. I think he'll win one before that though.

Osgood's first season with the Islanders is currently their best regular season in the last 25 years. He joined them the year after they lost 51 games. Whether he carried the team or not, it was a damn good year for him.

Ozzy .929%, it's great to see him play solid and get a win. Even better to be 2-0 with Chicago 0-2.

This tandem will win the jennings. Osgood will obviously be good because he's clearly 'the backup' again. Howard will not have a sophomore slump because he's pretty much 100 years old. We should be more worried about his decline.

Bionic legs?

I met Chris Osgood at a signing event when I was 6 or 7. Don't remember much except that he was joking around the whole time. My friend and I walked past Chris Chelios at Troy Sports Center. I didn't really notice it was him until I turned and looked, but my friend was just walking in and said "Hey." to him. Chris responded "Hey." And that was it.

Expensive goaltending isn't worth it. There isn't that much difference between top-5 and average when it comes to goalies anymore. Lose Luongo, insert Schneider and $6m elite defenseman... VAN is the same or more likely does better this year. Lose MAF, insert any decent plug goalie and $5m winger for Sid, I bet PIT does better.

I'll take 11 points in 10 games from a slump any day. Of course I'd rather see him scoring goals like the last few years, but I don't think offense is really our problem. At least he'll [probably] have about a month longer to recover before next year.

Howard is a physically and technically a better goalie than Osgood is right now. But I do believe we'd be doing better had Osgood played more and gotten the start in the playoffs. It's impossible to know that now though.

Defense and goaltending. The defense hasn't been really good. Howard has been solid, but far from great. We've become used to a higher level of goaltending in the last two years. Coaching.

This is why people calling for Ozzy to start more than 1 game in the last few months weren't just blind Ozzy homers. It'd be nice to have the OPTION to go to him, but we really don't have that. Howard should start game 4 anyway. If he sucks and we lose, I'd go to Ozzy for game 5. Not that it would really matter after that.

YES! YES! YESYSYSYSYEYSEYSYES

see, that was easy

Ozzy would only get playtime if the game is unreachable. So.......for those of us that turned on the game 10 minutes late, WTF.

This article isn't so much Ozzy-bashing as a passive-aggressive stab that WILL generate negative bashing on this forum, all built on baseless stats that mean nothing taken in proper context. They're all true facts and statistics, but the comparison just doesn't make any sense when you consider the situation. I'm still behind Jimmy 100%.

What? Of course compared this way Ozzy is going to look terrible! Remember how everything happened? Howard and Osgood were fairly even statistically for the first few months of the season. This was when the whole TEAM was playing like s***. Remember, Osgood was hovering around .900 - Not good, but not terrible. And then Howard played good a few games in a row - He's started 95% of the games since then. The TEAM has also played indisputably better, and not just because of a different goalie. Osgood has had maybe 3 starts since then, usually in back to back situations or against top teams. It doesn't make sense to compare their seasons like this. Howard has had 50 games of a more-healthy, much better defensively team compared to Osgood's 20 games when they were playing terrible and half the team was injured. I could see this comparison being valid if they were alternating games and playing with the same guys, but let's be honest. Osgood hasn't had much of a chance to do anything this year. In my opinion, his stats might as well be invalidated. He's barely on the team. This is not a knock against Howard at all. He's played very well and he fully deserves the starting job. I think Howard should and will start in the playoffs (if we get there), and do very well for us. I just don't see a reason to knock Ozzy down even further at the twilight of his career when he's had a season like this by making ridiculous statistical comparisons. You can't look at statistics in a vacuum.

Hopefully Rafalski saves some of his new scoring ability for the Wings. 4 goals in 57 games for us, then he goes to Team USA and scores 4 goals in 2 games.......!

IMO, Babcock has always been terrible with goalies. I can't comment on other areas yet. His team could still win gold.

Analysis like this is pretty dangerous. Ozzy did actually make a few really good stops, and it just doesn't work to guess which ones either guy would have let in. IMO, the team would have let either guy down. Howard having a really good game probably would have still let in 3-4, maybe even 5. Who knows. I just don't like the way Babcock handles our goalies. Howard has been clearly better and I agree that he should have been and continue to start 80% of the games. The problem is that Howard now looks burned out from starting near 20 in a row, and Osgood is still struggling - month-long gaps in play can't be helping that. 4 games for Howard, 1 game for Osgood, rinse and repeat for the rest of the season unless something changes. I would wager that both of our guys would be playing better if we had been doing that for the last couple of months.

Ozzy is clearly just looking to fill the wily old man role we haven't had since Hasek left. Anyway, I can see the point in what he said. IMO, we're on track to burn Howard out like many of the recent rookie standout goalies... it would be good to get Ozzy a game every 4-5, more if he plays great. But Ozzy still shouldn't have said it.

THIS ^^ For all the bitching and moaning and arguing we're all doing in this thread, IMO... our goaltending hasn't had that much to do with our wins and losses this year. We lose when the team doesn't score. Going through both guys' game logs, it is ridiculous how similar all of our losses are in the last couple months: Ozzies: 0-3, 3-4 OTL, 0-3, 1-3, 1-2 OTL, 1-5 Howards: 0-1 OTL, 0-3, 3-4, 0-1, 1-4, 0-2, 1-3 We just don't score.

Osgood and Howard had nearly identical stats in November. Osgood got 7 goals for in 6 November games. Had a few losses with no goal support too... Howard has started 80% since then. Osgood hasn't had the same chance to improve. Howard took the few starts in a row he got and ran with them. No reason to bash either Howie or Ozzy I think.