Let's Go Blues

Gotta love it!

Looks like he will improve to what, 9-1 now? Yet he remains our backup.....

How does anyone justify putting in Halak when we have Elliot playing to the level he's at right now...also, I don't want to jinx us at such an early point, but from what I'm seeing right now, this is not only a playoff caliber team but a contender for the playoffs right now. I think they need some offensive strategy adjustment and could definitely use one more forward to help out, but over all this is going to be one awesome season. Let's go Blues!

WOO!

Just think of what we could be with perron, aMac, crombeen, Carlo, and huskins in the lineup

PGABluesFan wrote:Looks like he will improve to what, 9-1 now? Yet he remains our backup.....

A guy that most of us thought would lose the backup job to Bishop and start the season in Peoria is now 9-1 and leads the league in GAA. You ain't kidding when you say that you've gotta love it.

I keep waiting for him to fizzle out, but he's playing very well right now. Hopefully this is more than a hot streak.

cardsfan04 wrote:I keep waiting for him to fizzle out, but he's playing very well right now. Hopefully this is more than a hot streak.

Yeah.
It looks like more than just a hot streak. He may have just gotten over the hump in his career...you never know.
He is tracking the puck extremely well. He's not getting lucky, aside from a couple post shots last night...but one could argue he had the angle cut down perfectly on those.
He stopped a couple breakaways last night and looked good doing so, one of which was on Iginla.

He's not just the benefactor of good play in front of him (Osgood with the Wings), he is really playing very, very well.
I could understand thinking his numbers would start to decline at some point if he was playing like Halak was at the beginning of last season, where Halak was putting up wins but wasn't quite playing as well as his numbers implied.

Elliot is playing every bit as good as his numbers indicate...and he's done it for 10 games now. And he's not playing against lesser teams...he is doing this against everyone.

And with that said, Halak is playing much better over the past half dozen games. Much, much better actually. He's still not at Elliot's level yet, but I'm more comfortable with him in net now than I was at the beginning of the season.

Right now, I couldn't be happier with our goaltending situation. It's the best goaltending we've had in a long, long time.

I think the rest of the team is the benefactor of having Elliott behind them. If the kid keeps playing the way he's playing and doesn't play in at least 75% of the remaining games, I'd be pissed. and when he does lose again, and it has to happen eventually, we don't need any knee jerk "that's why he's the backup" reactions where they go back to Halak and he shits the floor.

To bad Halak is going to be in net against the Caps.

With the Caps making a coaching change, that game is going to be difficult regardless of who is in goal. The Caps will come out fired up for the new coach to prove they belong - ala what has happened to the Blues since Hitchcock took over. Or at least that is what Caps fans hope. Ovechkin may have gotten what he wanted, but Boudreau was doing the right thing which fired up this whole brouhaha by leaving Ovie on the bench in the final minute of a 1 goal game. The right line scored the game-tying goal. What folks keep ignoring - Ovie clearly got fired up because he then assisted on the game winning goal in OT. He had been playing like crap the entire game, so Boudreau benched him in favor of a line which had been busting it's ass all night. That line did tie the game. Egos get in the way sometimes, though.

Oh....


ELLIOOOTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!

What if he continues to play this well? Right now, he is outplaying Halak. And Halak has a much bigger salary and a multi-year contract. What will this mean for Halak?

If we decide to keep Halak, then Elliot is going to be some major trade bate next season.

All in all, this is a good problem to have.

I was cautiously optimistic about the Halak signing at the time and hindsight is developing the rest of it.

I really don't know that NHL managers haven't caught on to this: Almost without exception, every non-regularly starting/regular goalie that burns like fire in the playoffs, leads his team deep and puts up phenomenal numbers, almost ALL of them, don't come anywhere near that the following regular season. Heck you even get backups "stealing" the job, do unreal and then settle back into mediocrity. Biggest examples off the top of my head are Giguere and Anderson (Cam Ward for Carolina, I think Raycroft had one playoff year like that) but it happens every year. More power to the goalies who cash in on it but a single playoff run is just NOT enough body of work to command top dollar and I don't get why more GM's haven't caught on to that.

As for Elliott, I would be absolutely shocked if kept this thing rolling. For one thing it's just impossible: These numbers that he's putting up are just pure insanity. For another- yea he might have "turned the corner" and "figured it out" so to speak but you have to take the whole season's body of work to really examine and as his numbers fall off (as they inevitably must unless he's a lock for the Vezina by March) we'll just have to see where he settles in... because he's not there right now, there's no way.

I love hearing Kurbs say, "...you can bring out the Zamboni" when Elliot is in NET!!!!

WaukeeBlues wrote:
As for Elliott, I would be absolutely shocked if kept this thing rolling. For one thing it's just impossible: These numbers that he's putting up are just pure insanity. For another- yea he might have "turned the corner" and "figured it out" so to speak but you have to take the whole season's body of work to really examine and as his numbers fall off (as they inevitably must unless he's a lock for the Vezina by March) we'll just have to see where he settles in... because he's not there right now, there's no way.

While I agree he's playing out of his mind and there has to be at least some degree of a 'back to earth' experience at some point, he's far more likely then Halak to keep up this strong play because he controls rebounds. He's simply not going to have to make as many spectacular saves because he's not going to put as many on a platter for the opposition.

DaDitka wrote:

WaukeeBlues wrote:
As for Elliott, I would be absolutely shocked if kept this thing rolling. For one thing it's just impossible: These numbers that he's putting up are just pure insanity. For another- yea he might have "turned the corner" and "figured it out" so to speak but you have to take the whole season's body of work to really examine and as his numbers fall off (as they inevitably must unless he's a lock for the Vezina by March) we'll just have to see where he settles in... because he's not there right now, there's no way.

While I agree he's playing out of his mind and there has to be at least some degree of a 'back to earth' experience at some point, he's far more likely then Halak to keep up this strong play because he controls rebounds. He's simply not going to have to make as many spectacular saves because he's not going to put as many on a platter for the opposition.

Elliot keeping this up all year isn't likely at all, only because it would be one of the best seasons a goalie has had in a long, long time. His numbers are sick.

With that said, Elliot hasn't been lucky, he hasn't had a shut down defense or puck control domination from the offense in front of him or benefited from play against sub-par teams...he's been very good and made countless tremendous saves and a good number of those starts have come against good teams.

He's tracked the puck extremely well, been square to the shooters and has for the most part controlled his rebounds.
With the way he is playing, I can totally see him having a very good season when all is said and done...assuming the team in front of him doesn't fall apart and hang him out to dry. I can see him finishing with a GAA around 2.00 and a save % around .930.

cprice12 wrote:.assuming the team in front of him doesn't fall apart and hang him out to dry.

You would have to think our defensive play could only get better. There has been some pretty rough stretches back there.

cprice12 wrote:He's tracked the puck extremely well, been square to the shooters and has for the most part controlled his rebounds.

In addition to those factors, he also seems to play high in the crease most of the time. He doesn't back up as much as Halak does. It drives me nuts when Halak is back in the crease and not out high when the Blues are breaking out of the zone. All it takes is a turnover and Halak is screwed because he isn't as aggressive tracking the puck when the Blues have possession. I never see Elliott "letting up" in terms of tracking the puck regardless of who has possession, while Halak seems to 'relax' in the net when he shouldn't.

Remember fellas - the question with Elliot in Ottawa was never whether or not he was capable of playing well.

It was whether or not he was capable of playing well for an entire season and if he was capable of stepping up when the pressure was on.

It wasn't his 'regular' play that cost him his starters gig in Ottawa; he was generally seen as a guy that could absolutely be very good for decent stretches. What got him fired was the fact that he would go into long funks that would really damage the team. It also seems they felt that this would keep him from ever being a true #1 goalie or a potential playoff factor.

I'd be damn reluctant to move Halak to clear space for Elliot, to be honest. He's cratered under the pressure of the big chair before. Unless we believe Allen can step in and start in the event that Elliot truly is better served as the underdog backup, I'm not so keen on trading Halak.