“Goalie are Voodoo” is a quote that Lowetide uses quite a bit over at his blog. It’s a statement that couldn’t be more true when applied to the Edmonton Oilers, a team the has been searching for goaltending help since MacT decided to ask the question regarding Devan Dubnyk.
The last time Edmonton had league average goaltending over a full season? The lockout shortened 2012-13 season when Dubnyk provided that. In 2013-14, Dubnyk imploded in October and November while in 2014-15 Ben Scrivens and Viktor Fasth imploded in….well the whole damn season!
This year, after a solid start, Cam Talbot has hit a wall and struggled through the months of October and November. Must mean that the Oilers just picked bad goalies, right? No, not exactly. Dubnyk was a finalist for the Vezina trophy last season as the NHL’s top goalie. Scrivens and Fasth had both put together solid seasons as backups prior to their stop in Edmonton, and Cam Talbot had done the same prior to his move to the Oil this past summer.
In every case, the track record of the goaltenders that Edmonton went with was pretty good. None of them were proven starters, but all of them had proven they could play at the NHL level. When in Edmonton, each of them looked like they belong in the Russian Tier 2 league. Yup, goalies really are voodoo.
The Oilers payed multiple assets for Scrivens, Fasth and Talbot, but so far none of those bets have paid off. There was another move for a goalie in there too, a move that at the time was looked at as a ‘nothing’ trade by media and fans alike. It was Edmonton dealing a long-shot prospect in Liam Coughlin to Chicago for a KHL goalie.
The KHL goalie, Anders Nilsson, has performed the best out of any of the bets that the Oilers have made in net. He’s also close to winning the job as the official starting goaltender of the Edmonton Oilers. Funny how that works, isn’t it?
The Numbers:
Nilsson, outside of his terrible start against the Washington Capitals at home in October, has been really good for the Oilers. He’s given the team a chance to win almost every night and he’s even stolen a few wins for his team. That’s something that Edmonton didn’t have in each of the last two seasons.
Entering Friday’s game, Nilsson held a record of 6-7-1 with a SV% of .915. That .915 SV%, if held throughout the entire season, would be the best goaltending Edmonton has received in over two seasons. It’s also right on par with the league average in this area, which currently is .916.
In his last five starts, Nilsson is over .930 in terms of SV%, which has allowed Edmonton to steal games against Pittsburgh and Boston and nearly steal a win in Washington against the Capitals.
His numbers aren’t mind-blowing, but they are average over the season and extremely strong as of late. That’s something Edmonton has lack and sorely needed.
Can He Be A Number One?:
This is the million dollar question and in all honesty it is almost impossible to answer. Yes, Nilsson has been the better of Edmonton’s two options this season, but he’s played in less than 20 games here. We are dealing with a very small sample size and this could simply be a hot stretch for the player.
That said, we can look to his KHL numbers last season and see a goalie who was, for a lack of a better term, incredible for his team, posting over a .930 SV% in Europe’s top league. We’ve also started hearing that his last two seasons in North America, which featured oddly declining numbers, was marred with an illness.
So far, so good for the big goalie in Edmonton, but if we have learned anything over the last few seasons it is that goalies are voodoo. Devan Dubnyk, Ben Scrivens and Viktor Fasth weren’t as bad as they appeared when in Edmonton’s nets. Is Anders Nilsson as good as he appears? It’s a question that will be answered as time goes along this season.
One thing is for sure, however, he’s made a helluva first impression and is closing in on being Edmonton’s starting netminder. Another strong month like his previous two and we might need to start considering that Peter Chiarelli filled a massive hole via the move we thought least likely to provide an answer.
Lowetide is wise, goalies really are voodoo.
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