Coach not cutting goalies any slack

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/11/2015 (3639 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ST. LOUIS — Paul Maurice was talking goaltending the other day — Winnipeg Jets goaltending, to be specific.

The Jets head coach was asked if he felt a bit sorry for his goalies lately, given all the defensive woes his team has been having through a losing streak that had stretched to five games heading into Monday night’s game against the St. Louis Blues.

It was a golden opportunity for Maurice to give his goaltenders a pass, but Maurice passed on issuing a pass.

“No, I don’t feel bad for the goaltenders,” Maurice said following his team’s 7-0 loss to the Nashville Predators Saturday night. “They’re all part of it. They had a lot of chances to stop the puck. It’s a tough life.”

It’s a goalie’s life, all right, and it’s one that has never been tougher than it’s been in the month of November for Ondrej Pavelec and Michael Hutchinson.

Consider the plummetting Jets goaltender numbers this month compared with the opening month of the season: a team goals-against average in October that was a sparkling 2.55 is a bloated 4.28 in November and October’s .922 Jets save percentage has plummetted to just .851 this month.

So no, the Jets goaltending numbers aren’t very good. But is it really fair to blame the goaltenders for a stretch of hockey that has seen, for instance, the Jets give up four breakaways in two games last week?

Yes it is, Maurice insisted again on Monday. “If we give up nine breakaways, the percentages say 66 per cent of them get saved. So grab six of them — and if you have a big night, grab seven of them,” said Maurice.

‘They had a lot of chances to stop the puck. It’s a tough life’

For the record, the Jets goalies stopped just one of the four breakaways that came against them last week — and that one saw the puck roll off a skater’s stick.

Still, that seems like kind of a high bar for Maurice to set for a pair of goaltenders who have been the last line of defence in a long line of defensive mistakes over the past week and a bit. And as he talked about it a little longer, Maurice made clear goaltending is down the list of things he thinks need to be fixed on this team right now.

“They don’t get to control a lot of what happens in front of them,” Maurice said of Pavelec and Hutchinson. “So no, I’m not hanging (them) for the play in front of them. And there also haven’t been a lot of bad goals…

Winnipeg Free Press | Newsletter

The Warm-Up

Winnipeg Jets Game Days

On Winnipeg Jets game days, hockey writers Mike McIntyre and Ken Wiebe send news, notes and quotes from the morning skate, as well as injury updates and lineup decisions. Arrives a few hours prior to puck drop.

Sign up for The Warm-Up

Sign Up

I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

“But it’s a dangerous thing to separate, ‘Oh, well, it if it wasn’t for the goaltender…” If the goaltender has a big night and plays great, the forwards and D in front of him have a big piece of that, too. And the opposite is true — if we’re godawful in front of them, there’s always the chance.

“They can always at least keep the game tied. So everybody’s got to pitch in.”

Two of the last three games before Monday night saw the starting Jets goaltender get pulled. Pavelec got the hook in Minnesota last Tuesday after he’d given up four goals in the first two periods, while Hutchinson lasted just 12 minutes Saturday night in Nashville before he got the hook with the Jets down 3-0.

In tandem with the plummetting team goaltending numbers have been the decline in the individual numbers for Pavelec and Hutchinson. Before Monday night, Pavelec’s goals-against average had soared to 2.96 while his save percentage was just .901, while Hutchinson — Monday night’s starter versus the Blues — wasn’t much better, with a 2.77 GAA and .915 save percentage.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @PaulWiecek