As a brief, casual fan, I'm a bit torn here.Firstly, I've been long on the record as saying I don't buy that the Senators have bad goalies. My position is that the goalies are not nearly as "bad" as the guys in front of them made them look.
You can tilt numbers any way you want. For example, the dreaded Save percentage. A lower save percentage means that the goalie is letting a higher percentage of shots-against past him into the net. However, consider this: if the defense is doing their jobs, all the soft easy shots should never make it to the net, meaning that the goalie is left dealing with the hard (or bad) ones. A far more difficult prospect.
For the last two years I've said that defense needed to be a priority for this team. Last year we had a couple of solid shut-down shot-blocking monsters in the form of Volchenkov and Sutton. After that, we had journeyman Kuba, solid if uninspiring Phillips, future star Karlsson, alleged tough guy Carkner, and... um. It was, in a word, thin.
This year we have more of the prototypical "puck-moving defensemen". Gonchar should teach Karlsson his trade. Carkner's back. Brian Lee, who I've honestly never even noticed, is back. Kuba managed to hurt himself even before the pre-season got going. Campoli is still around.
I'm not entirely sure that this lineup is much of an upgrade. It is certainly less tough than last year's, and I think that is going to be a problem.
The point to all this is that this year's defense is more of an offensive defense, which isn't going to do the guy in the net any improvement. There are going to be nights, especially during road swings through the west, when these guys are frankly going to get run over and its going to be painful to watch.
Whomever gets put in the net for Ottawa is therefore going to have to deal with defenders who are possibly not optimized for defending; those ugly scrambles in the defensive zone will mean opponents' shots-on-net counts will be correspondingly high, and the quality of those shots will also be high, meaning that the goals-against will be higher rather than lower.
I've said this before: not even Martin Brodeur could win behind these guys some nights.
Now when everything works, it doesn't matter. When Elliot had those wonderful runs last year, the defense stepped up to help both defend him and to help the offense. This fed back to Elliot encouraging him to raise his game, and the whole thing lifted the rest of the team too. But nobody can play over their heads like that for an entire season.
All this said means I don't think that the media or the blogosphere is going to be happy with the goaltending this year. I think goals-against and the shots-on-net counts are going to be horribly high.
And unless the offense can generate more goals than they give up, the team will be in trouble on some nights.
Problem is, that's the essence of run-and-gun. And last year anyways Ottawa was doing this without the "gun" part of the plan. Ottawa's failed with this before, just as Washington is failing with it now.
The larger problem is, even with a mixed an mediocre defense and an offense that can't score, this team is probably still a lock for one of the second-tier playoff spots... at which point they'll be dumped in the first round (again) by one of the East's few quality teams.
There's no immediate incentive to really deal with the problem, especially with Toronto just down the road constantly tinkering with varied collections of spare parts in an attempt to somehow build a winning team -- a plan, I believe will only work briefly, and only if they get unbelievably lucky.
I think Murray's done the right thing with his drafts and prospects trades to build a bunch of good defensive prospects. They are all going to be ready at the same time, and Murray can trade a few away in exchange for some forwards. With some careful trades and some luck, the team could have real potential in a couple of years.
This year, though, I think will be more of the same.
