First and foremost, I’m a huge Preds fan and not a doomer. I truly think we have the opportunity to have a cup run this year.
But I’ve said this before in comments, “why in the world are we letting a backup goalie walk when he has the identical stats to our starting G??” I get it’s a small sample size, but still, that means when Saros is out, we are replacing him with Saros. And now Saros is dealing with injury.
Wedgewood has looked shakey and Murray is unproven. There was no good reason we should have taken a risk on new back up goalies when Lank was proven and loved by the franchise. I mean, the mean shut out the Stanley cup champions at the end of the season on 33 shots on goal. What were we thinking?
3 comments
They didn’t “let” him walk, he wanted to look elsewhere as he wanted a chance to play more games. That was something that only would be possible in Nashville if Saros misses significant time.
I don’t know if you noticed, but in games where Lanky started, the game plan was very defensive, and there were a lot of blocks and overall conservative play when he was in net. I don’t like him being gone either, but he was going to probably demand more money than Trotz would’ve been willing to pay for a backup.
Here’s the deal. They needed a backup goalie. They liked Lankinen. They were making other moves in FA to keep the team under the cap and had to lock in someone in a salary window. Backup goalie is just a part of an overall strategy.
The team needed to clear it up and fill the position to keep from getting shut out in FA. They did not wait around and shouldn’t have.
If Lankinen would have taken their deal, he would have stayed. He didn’t. They moved on to Wedgewood.
Where Lankinen eventually went and for how much is irrelevant. He didn’t take their offer then. He probably could have gotten that same offer in February if he had wanted but he wanted to test the market. That’s his right.
One of the possible reasons Lankinen got shut out in FA is because everyone knows the goalie situation in Nashville. The backup on the Predators almost always performs better than he actually is somewhere else, for a variety of reasons. Call it the Anders Lindback Principle.
Wedgewood will either be better, worse, or about the same but nothing has happened yet to give any indication. That preseason was as meaningless as it gets.