Goalies Are Overrated: Pekka Rinne and the Nashville Predators

Nashville. The Predators have been up-and-down all season. A team that has won games 7-5 and then lose them 0-5. In between, sure, like every team there are close games as well.

Coming into the season, it was expected that this Peter Laviolette coached team would be in the upper tier of teams. They have a great defense, at the time with three arguably number 1 d-men in Shea Weber, Roman Josi and Seth Jones. I don't think the defense is the let-down. It's the forwards.

After 2nd year right wing Filip Forsberg and sniper James Neal LW there really isn' t much offense there. Look no further than Mike Ribeiro being the number one center. He is not a number one line guy. He can finish and has quick hands, but no. Not a number one. Also, there is a big lack of defensive forwards - again Mike Ribeiro can't come close to claiming to be such. But the only other center close to it is Mr. Underwood - Mike Fisher. He isn't terrible. But at his line's best there would be a +/- of zero.

You can only do so much to create offense if you don't really have any true offensive players. Open it up. As a team opens things up, the opponent, if playing a patient counter-attack style (think old New Jersey Devils and Colorado Avs of the same era - the late 90s into 2000s) - if an opponent plays patient, they will get some high quality chances. And with high quality chances, any goalie's numbers are going to falter.

All this just to point you to this article - Blame the goalie.

Again, if we look at goalies through the correct lens, we know that the goalie is largely just a measure of what the defense/system in front of them gives up.

Pekka Rinne is getting shelled because the team is giving up good chances - in bunches. Of course, even according to him, he is letting the team down. But in what way? What does he need to change?

Goalies are always like this - no one know what to tell them. "Just get better, Mr Struggling Goaltender" When critics blame goalies for team failures, I am left with nothing else to say but Goalies are overrated.

Update:
Numbers for Panthers goalies Al Montoya and Roberto Luongo in the four games without Aaron Ekblad D...
Panthers have given up 3, 6, 3, and 4 goals in the four games without Ekblad.
Al Montoya .846 33/39 shots
Roberto Luongo .850 34/40 shots

Those two goalies need to get better. (the small sample size can be viewed as meaningless, if you want)