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Granted he's not as good as he was when with the Habs but a lot of a players success comes from not only personal talent but also team chemistry,Halak fit in nicely with the team,he also brought the team further along in the playoffs than they had been in a long time,his reward for that accomplishment was to be traded,meanwhile Price does nothing but gets injured a lot and chokes when the pressure is on.
Those cigarettes must be catching up to his health...
Granted he's not as good as he was when with the Habs but a lot of a players success comes from not only personal talent but also team chemistry,Halak fit in nicely with the team,he also brought the team further along in the playoffs than they had been in a long time,his reward for that accomplishment was to be traded,meanwhile Price does nothing but gets injured a lot and chokes when the pressure is on.
I never saw anything special in Halak after that year. Don't get me wrong, he's not Pavelec or the last 4 years of Cam Ward, who are putting up LOUSY numbers year after year now. I don't even think he's as bad as Pekka Rinne, who is still called a top 10 goaltender in the league, despite being below average for 3 of the last 4 seasons. Aside from the Vezina caliber season the year before this past one.
I think of Halak as being on par with Dubnyk. He's in the dime a dozen bin at this point. Dubnyk had that really amazing year in 14-15, a really horrendous year in 13-14, and was just pretty average last year. Which is probably what he truly is these days. Islanders fans are already hoping that Jaro never plays for them again, which is also foolish because they're banking on career backup Thomas Greiss being their starter and repeating the career year he had last season.
It was obvious after that run that Halak was going to be traded, because Price was younger and had the much higher ceiling. And I believe that Price is the far superior goaltender. Halak hasn't done anything in the playoffs since that year. To be fair, he got hurt in 2012 after 2 games and didn't start in 2013. Probably because Elliott was better and Halak had a terrible season. And he was traded for Miller in 2014. He played good in the 2015 playoffs for the Islanders, it wasn't nearly his fault they lost. Last year he was injured before the playoffs and unavailable for them. I blame them for not getting back a better package for Halak, as I feel they could have gotten more at the time. A go nowhere prospect Ian Schultz, who busted. And Lars Eller, who they just traded to Chicago for Andrew Shaw last weekend at the draft. I think they could have at least got a 2nd round pick also, which I don't believe they did.
As far as Price in the playoffs, he hasn't been that good, but his last couple playoffs were at least decent. He had a .919 and .920 save percentage in his last two playoffs. That's not Conn Smythe caliber, though it's not much lower than what the two cup finalist goalies had this year. That tells you they had superior teams and didn't have to face as many shots and had more goal support than Price in those years. Price also had a .934 save percentage and GAA a little over 2 the year after Halak's run and the Habs were still eliminated in 7 games. I don't remember the series all that well, but that's pretty good numbers for a starting goalie on the losing team. That tells me that he played awesome, but didn't get the goal support or was facing a lot of shots. Kind of like how Martin Jones outplayed Matt Murray this year in the SCF, but the Sharks lost because Jones was facing a hell of a lot more shots than Murray and didn't get the goal support.
They played their worst game of the season on Wednesday against the Canucks and still won 3-0.
The ripple effect of having Price back and Weber on D is infusing the whole team with confidence. Andrew Shaw has added some welcome grit up front too.
Sometimes a good beatdown is necessary to bring you back together. Looks like it's working as they're on a roll again.
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