Burgandy Revolver
Posted 1:35 PM ET | Comments 0
Two games in the books and... yikes.
I'm very curious to hear from other fans, and Avs fans in particular, what their take is on the goalie situation (mess).
How much patience and/or faith do you have in Budaj and Raycroft?
How much last season flavored rotation amongst mediocrity can your stomach take?
I was optimistic that the Avs had a #1 guy between Budaj maturing and Jeff Hackett helping Raycroft find his mojo.
Then, the Avs played hockey last Thursday. And again last night.
The Budaj fans were pleading all summer for us to give him a chance.
Okay, I'll bite.
Just out of curiosity,
How many chances does he need?
Budaj has been given a multitude of chances to earn the starting job and squandered each and every one. This year, thanks to an unusually weak free agent crop in the goalie department, Budaj won the job more by default than anything else.
One thing I am sure of, I do not have the patience to watch the Avs to rotate two sub-par netminders and wasting easy points all season. They gave away at least one last night.
If I'm the Avs GM, I just upgraded from casual browsing to brand research.
Maybe the answer Khabibulin, maybe it's somebody else, but if the Avs' outplay team x and lose due to bad goaltending as they did from October through December last year, there are some big problems.
1) Peter Forsberg. He will be back, but he won't come to an Avs team that isn't going to make the playoffs. Forsberg would give Tony Granato 3 outstanding scoring lines.
Sakic/Jones/Tucker, RPM, Forsberg/Wolski/Svatos, but Peter isn't getting all dressed up if there's no place to go come playoff time.
2) Joe Sakic next season. If the Avs tank this year, the chances of seeing Joe retire increase. He took longer than I anticipated to say he'd play this year. Everybody knows it's way more fun to play for a team that doesn't suck.
3) $ and Prospects. The Avalanche have a sufficient roster to miss the playoffs by 5 points or less. The way they scored goals last night showed that the offense will put points on the board and an excellent sixpack of defenseman will keep enough out to be competitive. The problem with competitive is when you miss the playoffs, you risk being sucked into the vacuum of NHL mediocrity. You lose out on both playoff income and draft picks. Attendance was a problem last year and won't get any better this year with the economy being what it is. The farm system lacks prospects. Apparently nobody was good enough to beat out the Cody's and Scott Parker or AT LEAST convince Granato that he doesn't need 6 grinding forwards in his lineup. The worst place a team can possibly finish in hockey is 9th and I'm afraid that is where this team is headed.
We'll see how things unfold over the next few weeks, but with every (soft) goal against, my finger gets a little itchier to pull the trigger on Budaj.
I'm very curious to hear from other fans, and Avs fans in particular, what their take is on the goalie situation (mess).
How much patience and/or faith do you have in Budaj and Raycroft?
How much last season flavored rotation amongst mediocrity can your stomach take?
I was optimistic that the Avs had a #1 guy between Budaj maturing and Jeff Hackett helping Raycroft find his mojo.
Then, the Avs played hockey last Thursday. And again last night.
The Budaj fans were pleading all summer for us to give him a chance.
Okay, I'll bite.
Just out of curiosity,
How many chances does he need?
Budaj has been given a multitude of chances to earn the starting job and squandered each and every one. This year, thanks to an unusually weak free agent crop in the goalie department, Budaj won the job more by default than anything else.
One thing I am sure of, I do not have the patience to watch the Avs to rotate two sub-par netminders and wasting easy points all season. They gave away at least one last night.
If I'm the Avs GM, I just upgraded from casual browsing to brand research.
Maybe the answer Khabibulin, maybe it's somebody else, but if the Avs' outplay team x and lose due to bad goaltending as they did from October through December last year, there are some big problems.
1) Peter Forsberg. He will be back, but he won't come to an Avs team that isn't going to make the playoffs. Forsberg would give Tony Granato 3 outstanding scoring lines.
Sakic/Jones/Tucker, RPM, Forsberg/Wolski/Svatos, but Peter isn't getting all dressed up if there's no place to go come playoff time.
2) Joe Sakic next season. If the Avs tank this year, the chances of seeing Joe retire increase. He took longer than I anticipated to say he'd play this year. Everybody knows it's way more fun to play for a team that doesn't suck.
3) $ and Prospects. The Avalanche have a sufficient roster to miss the playoffs by 5 points or less. The way they scored goals last night showed that the offense will put points on the board and an excellent sixpack of defenseman will keep enough out to be competitive. The problem with competitive is when you miss the playoffs, you risk being sucked into the vacuum of NHL mediocrity. You lose out on both playoff income and draft picks. Attendance was a problem last year and won't get any better this year with the economy being what it is. The farm system lacks prospects. Apparently nobody was good enough to beat out the Cody's and Scott Parker or AT LEAST convince Granato that he doesn't need 6 grinding forwards in his lineup. The worst place a team can possibly finish in hockey is 9th and I'm afraid that is where this team is headed.
We'll see how things unfold over the next few weeks, but with every (soft) goal against, my finger gets a little itchier to pull the trigger on Budaj.