Kippersoft

This post is going to anger a lot of Calgary Flames fans.

Kiprusoff has lost it. Sure, he's still an above average goaltender but it's come hard to accept that he no longer can steal games for the Calgary Flames. Since becoming a Flame in 2004, his numbers has steadily decreased. In the 2004 run, he was amazing, and the year after we pretty much banked on him every night and he won the Vezina. From then on, things have gone steadily down hill.

His excuses aren't nearly as good as Luongos: coming to training camp out of shape and being a chain smoker must not help you play 75 games a season. I think this guy needs a rest.

As of October 21, Mikka is sitting at a cool first place in GAA, 31st in save percentage, and 32 in GAA. Of course these look worse than they appear since it is still early in the season and our defensemen still have huge blunders at times.

Quoting from a Hark has he talked about LUongo - "Letting in goals that are alright to let in, but goals that superstar goalies should be saving" This parallels Mikkas play. Sure most goals he's left in aren't bad, maybe some are due to turnovers or sloppy plays, maybe some lucky bounces. He doesn't let in awful goals like Budaj or Gerber, but he's not saving them like a superstar that's being paid 7million dollars should be.

If you look back to my article in the summer, I mention how the NHL is screwing themselves over by signing to players to such long contracts. Kippersoft is 31 years old now and we're stuck with his megacontract for 7 years. Will he be like wine and Martin Brodeur and still be able to play like that? Or an untradeable anchor weighing our future down.

As I typed this, Calgary won 2-1. It is the first game that Kiprusoff has let less than three goals this season. Maybe this is a positive step. Maybe the next time he lets in 5, we should give Curtis a try.

The thing about Kipper is that people will stick by him and are blinded by the fact that he was amazing a few years back when we played in a defensive system. And I'm sure if he got traded to Minnesota he'd play at that calibre again. Now, he lets in huge rebounds because he challenges like a pyschopath and can't recover because he's too out of position afterwords and flops around like a beached whale.

With Kiprusoft, it's sort of like the elephant in the room, or that first cousin of yours that you think is pretty hot but can't say anything about it. Everyone knows deep down that he's an average goalie at best, but no one but yours truly has the guts to say anything about it. That's why you guys keep coming back and reading our blog.

Let's hope Kipper proves me wrong.


-Hal

P.S I wanna find out how long it took Tanguay + Nolan to score five goals combined last year, wouldn't that be a great statistic.