Few topics have been as polarizing this offseason as the Edmonton Oilers goaltending situation heading into the 2009-2010 season. The Oilers are coming off a season in which Dwayne Roloson posted the single greatest goaltending season of any goaltender in Edmonton Oilers history (I'll prove it in a day or two), and still managed to miss the playoffs.
Khabibulin and Deslauriers are pencilled in as the goaltenders right now. Looking back at the past few years for both and there is very little to be excited about. Khabibulin has put up sv% of (games in parenthesis) .886 (50), .902 (60), .909 (50) and .919 (42) in the last 4 years. While one positive sign is that he's trended upwards every year, the problem is that 3 of the 4 years he was below league average in terms of save percentage. The one year he exceeded (last year at .919), he played just 42 games. The biggest question at this point is how will his injury problems of the past impact him in the future? Can he play enough games at a high enough level to justify his contract?
At this point it's tough to see that happening. I don't buy a lot of the justifications about his play. Things like he wins when it counts look great on the back of hockey cards but I'm not sure how relevant it is. In 2007-08, the Chicago Blackhawks missed the post season by 3 points and Khabibulin was 23-20-6. If he was truely able to raise the level of play when it was warranted, I'm sure the Blackhawks would have liked some of that then... it would have made the difference between making and missing the playoffs. The other problem with that line of thinking is what is his mindset this year? Is this a year that he mentally brings it, or does he mail it in because the team has a reduced chance at the playoffs? At what point does he decide to bring his "A" game?
Others point to his playoff work last season in "leading" Chicago to the Conference finals. Not sure I buy that either. Khabibulin was full value in the Calgary series where he posted a 2.53 GAA and a .914 sv% (though he did bomb in both games in Calgary). He completely fell apart in the Vancouver series and was carried by the Blackhawks offense. His 3.04 GAA and his .873 save percentage are down right awful numbers (even in the 80's). Chicago made it to the conference finals on the backs of their offence which scored 24 goals in the series. This is not what anyone should consider "winning when it counts".
This doesn't even factor in his injury history, which should be a concern to everyone. He's not a 26 year old who can adapt... he's 35 and he hasn't been able to stay healthy for 4 years in a row.
The biggest problem with his indurability (I'll call Websters), is that his backup is unproven at best. This would be a great time to have a Mathieu Garon around, but instead the Oilers have Jeff Drouin Deslauriers, with all of 10 NHL games of experience and a spotty minor league track record.
One of the positives about JDD last year was that he fared pretty well in the games he started (2.86 GAA, .917 sv%). He got beat up in a pair of relief appearances (6.71 GAA, .792 sv%), which you can't really fault him too much on. Both games were well out of hand before he got in. The problem is, he only had 7 starts all last year and 3 were excellent (11/09 vs New Jersey, 11/10 vs NY Rangers, 4/10 Calgary), 2 were poor (11/13 vs Toronto, 11/30 vs Dallas) and he had 2 more which were good but unspectacular (10/17 vs Calgary, 4/11 vs Calgary). It really is a roll of the dice with him, and the sample size is so small that it's tough to draw any real conclusions based on his play.
You have to go back to his AHL career to get any sort of pulse on him as a goaltender. There is sort of a glass half full, half empty approach here. The good news is that he improved his save % every year in the AHL. He went from .888 to .897 to .908 to .912. The bad news is that every single year was below average at the AHL level and he was behind his comparable peers in every season.
It's very hard to find a goaltender with anything close to JDD's resume that ended up being more than just a replacement level goaltender. That might fly in Detroit, Pittsburgh or any other good team, but it's well below what the Oilers need, especially if they get an injury to Khabibulin.
When you look at the goaltending, there are a lot more negatives than positives. You can always hold out hope that guys play above your expectations, and if it does that's fantastic. Khabibulin has shown at times that he can play at a very high level. Anything less than the goaltending they got last year and the mountain just gets higher.
