Neither of our goalies inspire great confidence in me, frankly. Doesn't mean I don't like them. I just mean this I would never expect either to win a game for the Wings or do anything extraordinary out there.
But they are who we have. If the rest of the team wakes up and realizes they need to play the way they must in order to win, we'll be fine. Blocks shots, don't screen the goalie, don't deflect pucks in, clear the crease, don't allow shooters to walk right in on either goalie, it's going to go in. Just...show up.
I don't think Ozzie or Jimmy can play any better than they do right now. JMO.
Your buddy Hasek was notorious for having slow starts to the season. He always used to end up fine by the end. I'll worry about this down the stretch. I think both of our goalies are more than capable individually to get the job done. Osgood's proven it throughout his career and while Howard's still got some things to learn and prove, he's got a lot of skill and potential to become a solid NHL starter for a long time.
Our goalies fall victim to defensive sabotage far too often. That is what worries me year after year since our last Cup. They're too talented to play as sloppy as they do far too often. We have a balanced team. We don't have the biggest name goalies that you can hope will carry you when everyone else lets you down. That model works fine and we've proven that again and again. But the defense has to hold up their end of the bargain which they too often haven't. The all time elites wouldn't be fairng much better in many of the games the last few years with our defense playing as poorly as they have.
Again, I think both goalies are capable of getting the job done. McCrimmon? He's given no reason for us to believe he has control of the defense at any point since he's taken over. That's what really worries me.
