flyingnote38 wrote:Is the goalie 100% completely blame free for any 1-0 loss?
Yes. If your team gets shutout and you only allow 1 goal, you blame the team for not scoring. Blaming your goalie and saying he should have shut them out, is ridiculous and lazy. You have to score to win. Period.
Doesn't matter if its a great goal or a softie?
Nope.
In game #3 for example, it was a soft goal, but he made a number of great saves later in the game...so he made up for it. Period.
Doesn't matter if he does a Jacques Caron and accidently plays the puck into his own net for the only goal of the game?
Nope. See above about the need to score at least 1 goal to win a game. If you get shutout, you deserve to lose.
Doesn't matter if his team outshoots the opponent 50-5?
Nope.
In a case like that, you tip your cap to the other goalie.
Miller was acquired to win exactly those type of games.
And had we won 2-1, that game would have qualified as "one of those games". He stood on his head after that bad goal.
The sad fact is, that was actually his best game in the series and he still gave up a bad goal that lost the game.
The offense lost the game. Not Miller.
I am not saying that game 3 was
all his fault. But he was not free from
any blame in that loss, because it wasn't a good goal.[\quote]
If you want to hand out partial blame, I guess you could say it was 5% his fault...or whatever. But at that point, why are we even talking about Miller? The focus should be on the offense in that game and nothing else. That game ended up being HUGE. Had we won that game, the series would have been basically over...we'd have been up 3-0. The Hawks would have been done.
And why doesn't anyone comment on how the offense saved his bacon in game 1?
They did save him in game #1...but after the first period, he stood on his head...so he was a big part of the win as well.
Putting all of the blame on Miller for the series loss is just taking the easy way out when breaking down the series. It's lazy analysis IMO. Folks like to focus on a few soft goals and ignore the other great saves he made. Miller had, what, 2 bad periods in the series? And one soft goal outside of those two bad periods? And blaming him for the game #3 loss is insane. Let's say he did make that save and we go to OT...who's to say we still don't win BECAUSE WE COULDN'T SCORE A (Franking) GOAL.
If you were to be told before the game that the Hawks would only score one goal in game #3, how much would you have bet we would win that game? And then you find out we didn't score? Yeah. Blame the offense, credit Crawford...or whatever. But blaming Miller?? That's insane.
Crawford isn't a great goalie. He's just not. You don't need stellar goaltending all series long to win a series. Goalies are going to allow soft goals in the playoffs. It happens...they all do it. Every one...Miller included. Miller was good enough for us to win this series. Our offense wasn't.
I'm not sure I want Miller back or not though...and it has nothing to do with his playoff performance...it has to do with how much $$ he wants. If he takes less, like $5-ish million, I'd welcome him back in a second. If he wants $7 million...then I'd have to look at Elliott or someone else, because we need some money to add to the offense...and tying up $7 million for Miller might not allow us to do that without trading away some salary.
I'd bet money that Armstrong will make moves to improve the offense in the offseason. He has to.