Elliott added to the All Star Roster, 2nd appearance

[cprice12]

You mean his first few years in the league?
Why people want to hold that to him when that is when he was younger and not as experienced, I'll never know.

Well, I'll answer that now-so you can't say that about me anymore.

That 2010-11 season I pointed out where Elliott finished with 3.19/.894 in 43 games was his third full season in the league and fourth after his first call up. He was 26 years old when it ended. The next season in Colorado, he posted 3.83/.891 in 12 games as a backup. At 26/27 he wasn't some prospect-Chris Stewart is 27 and some people are saying he's already done and this after he posted two 28-goal seasons. In Halak's third full season, 2009-2010 (at the end of which he was 25), he played in 45 games posting 2.40/.924 with 5 shutouts in the regular season and then played 18 playoff games to the tune of 2.25/.923. Note that I'm not comparing Elliott to Roy or Rask or Rinne, who are all gold standard and were great right out of the box. I'm comparing him to Halak, who nobody here seems to think deserves national attention or superstar status. You've got to earn that. I'm much less irritated by a lack of recognition for Elliott than the ridiculous overrating of guys like Fleury, Howard and Crawford who are just passable goalies who have benefitted from being on great teams.

I don't think it matters how old he was before he came here or how washed up some folks think Chris Stewart is at his age.
Every player is different and it just looks to me that Elliott has found his game and is flourishing. It just took a bit longer than some other guys.
I'd be less inclined to debate this if this was Elliott's first year with us and first year playing well because if that was the case, you could make a good case to write this season off as a fluke season or a season where he benefits from playing for a good team or whatever. But he has done this for the 4th season in a row now and he has been an all-star in two of those years. The years in which he struggled are long gone and I really don't think they should apply to him when analyzing how good he is now. Why should it?

Elliott > Halak...it's not even close really. And I said the same thing when Halak was here if you care to go back and find comments I have made. Elliott simply played better than Halak did every season they were here together.
Halak can look quite good, but he can also look quite bad...and he tends to give up some really bad goals. And the fact that he can't hold on to the puck in his trapper, he can't stick handle worth a damn, nor can he seem to ever cover up the puck during a goal-mouth scramble, just make me want to say no to Halak. I was excited when we got him, but it didn't take long at all for me to get really uncomfortable with him in net...which was very disappointing. I never really had that feeling with Elliott. I was always much more at ease with him between the pipes.

[not_a_wings_fan]

Elliott > Halak...it's not even close really. And I said the same thing when Halak was here if you care to go back and find comments I have made. Elliott simply played better than Halak did every season they were here together.
Halak can look quite good, but he can also look quite bad...and he tends to give up some really bad goals. And the fact that he can't hold on to the puck in his trapper, he can't stick handle worth a damn, nor can he seem to ever cover up the puck during a goal-mouth scramble, just make me want to say no to Halak. I was excited when we got him, but it didn't take long at all for me to get really uncomfortable with him in net...which was very disappointing. I never really had that feeling with Elliott. I was always much more at ease with him between the pipes.

More importantly, I felt like the team shared your sentiments and played differently at times because of it. I don't know that they were ever confident in Halak's ability to make the critical save at the critical juncture.

[cprice12]

Elliott > Halak...it's not even close really. And I said the same thing when Halak was here if you care to go back and find comments I have made. Elliott simply played better than Halak did every season they were here together.
Halak can look quite good, but he can also look quite bad...and he tends to give up some really bad goals. And the fact that he can't hold on to the puck in his trapper, he can't stick handle worth a damn, nor can he seem to ever cover up the puck during a goal-mouth scramble, just make me want to say no to Halak. I was excited when we got him, but it didn't take long at all for me to get really uncomfortable with him in net...which was very disappointing. I never really had that feeling with Elliott. I was always much more at ease with him between the pipes.

More importantly, I felt like the team shared your sentiments and played differently at times because of it. I don't know that they were ever confident in Halak's ability to make the critical save at the critical juncture.

You may be right about that. But from watching him play, I don't feel his issues were because of the team in front of him not having confidence in him.

[ecbm]

Hey, what can I say? Making judgments on crazy things like numbers rather than gut feelings is well, I guess, crazy.

Neither Halak nor Elliott have ever done anything yet to impress me much. They're passable NHL goalies, capable starters right now, nothing more. Halak's one run through the playoffs when healthy is the most intriguing thing either of them has ever done in terms of performance/results.

Hell, the team playing different with Halak? I could just say a bunch of guys getting paid crazy money to play hockey shouldn't be spooked by playing in front a goalie like Halak. Frankly, though, I never saw that anyway.

As for age/experience, Curt-you're the one who brought that up. I really can't follow how you say don't look at Elliott's numbers through his age-27 season because that's too early in his career to evaluate but also say that another guy is seen to have virtually run the course on his entire NHL career at the same age is irrelevant. I also can't concede that it's irrelevant that another guy-who you flatly state is inferior to Elliott-in the same position put up better numbers at an earlier age. Generally: you can make anyone look good by eliminating certain parts of their careers from the aggregate numbers. And when a guy is 22 and coming up for his first 8-appearance cup of coffee I can see that. It is, however, stretching that way too far into the realm of rationalizing an already-formed opinion to extend said grace period to a guy's third and fourth full seasons when he's 26/27 years old. I mean, two teams had already given up on him by then. Whereas Halak was only traded because MON also had Price. (And they extracted a not insignificant fee in the form of Eller.)

To be clear-I think Elliott is doing very well now, I agree that what he did in OTT & COL mean exactly dick to the Blues, I agree that he appears to have found his game relatively late in his career and can be even better than he has been. But the original sentiment was:

I'm really surprised he doesn't get more recognition league-wide.

I'm responding to that. Maybe it's that I'm not in STL-all the time I'm hearing NYR/NYI and fans of other teams big up some guy who they're convinced is the most underrated player ever. I find it to be a tired rhetorical game. There's a large niche called "good enough to be very impressive to local fans but understandably not a superstar." Isles fans have been on about Okposo like that for years and the last couple seasons have finally shown what I said about him more than once: when he puts together a full season or two of consistent top-end play he'll get the cred. I mean, you could see flashes of his ability but it gets tiring explaining to indignant people why a guy who scores 19 while going -23 isn't a star.

[not_a_wings_fan]

Elliott > Halak...it's not even close really. And I said the same thing when Halak was here if you care to go back and find comments I have made. Elliott simply played better than Halak did every season they were here together.
Halak can look quite good, but he can also look quite bad...and he tends to give up some really bad goals. And the fact that he can't hold on to the puck in his trapper, he can't stick handle worth a damn, nor can he seem to ever cover up the puck during a goal-mouth scramble, just make me want to say no to Halak. I was excited when we got him, but it didn't take long at all for me to get really uncomfortable with him in net...which was very disappointing. I never really had that feeling with Elliott. I was always much more at ease with him between the pipes.

More importantly, I felt like the team shared your sentiments and played differently at times because of it. I don't know that they were ever confident in Halak's ability to make the critical save at the critical juncture.

You may be right about that. But from watching him play, I don't feel his issues were because of the team in front of him not having confidence in him.

I'm not talking about his issues, I am talking about the team's issues. He sucked at times, and the D and the forwards moved out of position to do his job rather than trusting him to make the save. It got us burned often, especially against good teams.

Does that make more sense?

[cprice12]

Hey, what can I say? Making judgments on crazy things like numbers rather than gut feelings is well, I guess, crazy.

Neither Halak nor Elliott have ever done anything yet to impress me much. They're passable NHL goalies, capable starters right now, nothing more. Halak's one run through the playoffs when healthy is the most intriguing thing either of them has ever done in terms of performance/results.

Hell, the team playing different with Halak? I could just say a bunch of guys getting paid crazy money to play hockey shouldn't be spooked by playing in front a goalie like Halak. Frankly, though, I never saw that anyway.

As for age/experience, Curt-you're the one who brought that up. I really can't follow how you say don't look at Elliott's numbers through his age-27 season because that's too early in his career to evaluate but also say that another guy is seen to have virtually run the course on his entire NHL career at the same age is irrelevant. I also can't concede that it's irrelevant that another guy-who you flatly state is inferior to Elliott-in the same position put up better numbers at an earlier age. Generally: you can make anyone look good by eliminating certain parts of their careers from the aggregate numbers. And when a guy is 22 and coming up for his first 8-appearance cup of coffee I can see that. It is, however, stretching that way too far into the realm of rationalizing an already-formed opinion to extend said grace period to a guy's third and fourth full seasons when he's 26/27 years old. I mean, two teams had already given up on him by then. Whereas Halak was only traded because MON also had Price. (And they extracted a not insignificant fee in the form of Eller.)

To be clear-I think Elliott is doing very well now, I agree that what he did in OTT & COL mean exactly dick to the Blues, I agree that he appears to have found his game relatively late in his career and can be even better than he has been. But the original sentiment was:

I'm really surprised he doesn't get more recognition league-wide.

I'm responding to that. Maybe it's that I'm not in STL-all the time I'm hearing NYR/NYI and fans of other teams big up some guy who they're convinced is the most underrated player ever. I find it to be a tired rhetorical game. There's a large niche called "good enough to be very impressive to local fans but understandably not a superstar." Isles fans have been on about Okposo like that for years and the last couple seasons have finally shown what I said about him more than once: when he puts together a full season or two of consistent top-end play he'll get the cred. I mean, you could see flashes of his ability but it gets tiring explaining to indignant people why a guy who scores 19 while going -23 isn't a star.

Elliott's numbers since he has been with St. Louis:
115 games played.
68 wins
29 losses
9 OTL
19 Shutouts
Save %: .927
GAA: 1.86 - Nobody even comes close to this one. To average a 1.86 GAA while sharing the workload with Halak is ridiculous.

His overall stat line is better than Rinne, Lundqvist, Halak, Quick and anyone else you want to toss out there.

According to hockey-reference's RBS (really bad starts) category, which means a start where he finished with a save % below .850:
Over the past 4 seasons...
Elliott has had 10 in 115 games played...one every 11.50 starts.
Quick has had 25 in 126 games played...one every 5.04 starts.
Rinne has had 29 in 177 games played...one every 6.10 starts.
Halak had 22 in 159 games played with STL...one every 7.23 starts.

You can say he's simply "a capable goalie" if you like...I don't get it, but you can say it.
I just don't see it that way based on his stats and from what I have seen. He's been far better than that.
The only thing anyone can say about Elliott is that he wasn't very good early in his career and he hasn't played in quite as many games as the other elite goalies in the NHL because he was splitting time with Halak the last 3 years...but that honestly doesn't really mean THAT much, because had he played in more games, he could have conceivably put up even better numbers. Maybe not, but it's certainly possible...so that argument can go either way.

He's been arguably the best goalie in the NHL since he has been with us. Which is substantially better than "a capable goalie" or "a career backup on a hot streak" as someone on Facebook pointed out...which I laughed at.

There's really not much else I can say about it.