A look at 3 available goaltenders for the Calgary Flames

Marc-Andre Fleury

The NHL definition of a desperation style goaltender. Marc-Andre Fleury will sometimes have happy feet and lose his net but he more than makes up for it with a lightning fast glove hand and ability to battle. He’s a guy that has played a lot of important minutes from the World Junior Championships to 2 Stanley Cup rings, albeit with varied success.

Fleury is a real leader on the back end. He’s been through the best of the best and the worst of the worst, nothing seems to rattle him anymore. He’s 32 now, which is still fairly young for a goaltender and signed for 2 more seasons at a reasonable cap hit for a starting goaltender. (5.75 mill)

He lost the crease to young Matt Murray last season, though not through any fault of his own. More due to the fact that Matt Murray seems to be some sort of Goaltending Jesus. However, Murray has missed all of these latest playoffs with an injury and Fleury stepped into a situation where he had to start on no notice and has since guided the Penguins to within 1 win of the Eastern Conference Finals.

Perhaps the goaltender who best signifies Calgary’s desire to start being a cup contender.

Jonathan Bernier

The youngest player on the list and possibly the most tantalizing. He has yet to establish himself as a legitimate starting goaltender, spending the season in Anaheim trying to get his career back on track as their backup. He’s played in 39 games this season going 21-7-4 with a 2.50 GAA and a .915 sv%. He actually took over the Ducks crease towards the end of February for about a month and played very well.

Bernier, when on, is a very sound positional goaltender who takes away the bottom half of the net very well and like another French-Canadian goaltender on this list has a quick glove hand in his arsenal, but he has struggled with inconsistency over his career.

The question becomes “Is he a goaltender who’s just entering his prime, who was rushed and has struggled with consistency, but is turning his game around and starting to live up to his potential?”

Or

“Is he another overhyped junior who’s best suited to be a backup?” Albeit a very good one.

Only time will tell but I will say I really like Bernier’s game and would be happy if the Flames brought him in to be “the guy”. He could be a very good starter for a long time. He also has a history with Flames President of Hockey Ops Brian Burke so there’s a connection there and as a pending UFA could be had for as little as contract offer come July 1^st.

Mike Smith

For me Mike Smith is the most interesting name on the list.

Smith tends to act like a 3^rd defenseman on the ice. When he’s on he can really stonewall another team and he has the ability to help move the puck up the ice which is an ability I think has some untapped offensive potential that has failed to show itself in Arizona due to their ability to be a hard working group of not a whole hell of a lot.

I’m not saying that Smith is good for 40 assists or anything, he just adds another strong outlet pass. The Flames are a team that has shown the ability to use the stretch pass to their advantage (i.e. the entirety of the 2014-2015 season) but they are also a team that shied away from it a lot of last season in search of adding more structure to their system.

In my opinion the stretch pass play is a very important play, the problem with the Flames old system is it relied too heavily on it. If you rely on the stretch pass for a majority of your offense other teams will eventually adapt and start abusing you. This is what happened to the Flames last season and this is the reason Bob Hartley was fired.

This season the Flames started to play a much stronger 5 man puck support system that the players started to have some success with after a rough start. However, if got to a point where most teams would stand 5 guys up in the neutral zone and create havoc while the Flames fumbled and turned the puck over.

The difference between these 2 systems is in a system that relies heavily on a stretch pass, a turnover creates an odd man rush going the other way more often.

If your team has the speed to get in behind the other teams defense and has the ability to stretch the neutral zone and your team is smart with how they use it then  teams will have to respect the stretch pass and defend against it resulting in more time and space in the neutral zone for your team to work the puck up the ice.

Mike Smith is one of a handful of guys in the NHL, and the only goalie on this list that has that type of ability. At his best he’s an absolute game changer on the back end. Not only does he have that shutdown ability, he adds another dynamic to the Flames outlet game, something they actually really could use to help them grow their system.

At his worst he’s probably a lot like Brian Elliot in the sense that when he’s on, he’s amazing and when he’s off he’s terrible. He always seems to play well against the Flames and has had some really great seasons behind some very stingy Arizona Coyotes teams. On the other hand 2 seasons ago he lost 42 of 62 games he played in. He’s also 35 and while that may not be too old for a goalie, he still has 2 seasons left on his contract (5.67 mill) and lately it seems like once a goalies game starts to fall, it falls hard.

Honestly I’d be happy if the Flames brought any of these 3 goalies in. They’re all very capable goaltenders who bring their own unique style. Since Mikka Kiprusoff retired in 2013 Flames fans have seen about 1 good month of goaltending. Mostly from Brian Elliott right before the Flames got into the playoffs and he imploded.

It honestly couldn’t get any worse than it has been, it can only stay super shitty. So from that aspect I’ll be excited for whoever the Flames decide to bring in but if I had to choose one then I’d probably go with Bernier just because of his age and the long term potential factor. But all 3 have really high potential and none of them are sure fire bets to solve the Flames goaltending problems.

Hopefully whoever the Flames do bring in, be it a sexy name or someone we’ve never heard of before, will come in and consistently make the saves they need to make.

That’d be a nice change of pace.