At the beginning of the 2011-2012 NHL season the courageous and valiant James “no middle name” Reimer vanquished all competition on his way to being crowned the NHL’s most excellent player as well as ensuring his club, the Toronto Maple Leafs, would be invited to join 15 other teams in post-season play. Atleast this is the way I remember it, given the hype of the Toronto media and their over-reaction to every beginning of a new Leaf season. When I looked this up I found the truth: He won four fucking games. 4. Four wins, one OT loss, one big injury. So if you’re rebuttal to the next 6 paragraphs is “Yeah but Reimer started the season so good, they have to play him!” Just remember: He won 4 games.
I mention this because it might seem logical that if Reimer started the season on such a roll then he should be forced back into the starting role upon his return. But with only 5 games of evidence it is hard to call what he did a roll, and it makes it hard to see why there is such a push for him to reclaim the top job again. It was a nice start but since his injury some things have changed. Mainly, Jonas Gustavsson has shown some flashes of being the goalie the Leafs have hoped he would be for three years now. The Monster, as he is known, is the reason the Leafs still hold their standing as a playoff team at this moment and the Monster is the goalie that should be getting the opportunity to lead his team to the playoffs. Yet it appears he might not. What is really weird to me is that the Leafs were in this position with Gustavsson only a few seasons ago. He was the young goalie struggling to find his way that the team kept pushing over and over again even though it was evident to everyone not invested in the situation that at that specific time, he just didn’t have it. Flash forward 2 seasons and he is now rounding into the goalie the organization presumably hoped he would be. Only now he has lost all support. Nothing adds up.
When Reimer first went down with injury Gustavsson came in to replace him. His play admittedly under-whelmed, but he was still winning. In 7 starts he managed to go 4-3. This apparently was not enough for the Leafs who felt at this time it was wise to turn to the young Ben Scrivens to see his first NHL action. Maybe Gustavsson was not playing like they hoped at the time but turning to a player who has never seen NHL action like Scrivens seemed like a bit of a stretch. The Leafs though seemed to have soured on the Monster and played Scrivens in 7 games in a 9 game stretch. He rewarded them by going 2-5. Following this, Gustavsson bailed them out by posting a 3-1 record for himself in a short starting stint. This led the leafs into an awkward December.
At that time they had a solid record of 14-9-2. Reimer returned from injury to start the month but immediately he proved that he was not himself. He would see the bulk of the starts in a month the Leafs played poorly. Gustavsson saw limited playing time and was not spectacular either, but one thing was clear, James Reimer was not playing well. This could be chalked up to his return from a head injury. These are always tricky and you never know when a player is totally back to 100%. But was it the injury? Or is Reimer just not that good? He was solid down the stretch last year, but this is a Leaf’s annual tradition. You can’t point to the beginning of this year, that was too small of a sample. There really is no evidence that Reimer is a really good goalie, we just don’t know at this point. Reimer is not a veteran goalie who is going to inevitably reclaim his starting position somewhere down the line. He is a player with less than 60 career starts. So why the constant push to get Reimer back in net? It may be because of the expectation leading into the season that the Leafs are so eager to make Reimer the starter again, but this, I believe, is foolish. The Leafs appear to be just hoping that he will turn into the player they envisioned he would be before the season started. But as my favorite writer likes to say, “You cannot confuse hope for a plan.” Many goalies have started their career out hot only to fall back to earth and play their way out of the league, we see this all the time. Right, Andrew Raycroft?
The Leafs ended December with many questions, but with the new year came a new Monster. Gustavsson owned the month of January and the Leafs should have been ecstatic. The Monster went 7-3 in January before a brutal 5-4 OT loss to the Penguins on January 31st that saw the Leafs squander a big-lead late. He got every start but one in January and didn’t give up more than 3 goals in a game for an entire month of play. But that Penguins loss was evidently enough to yank him. After that loss the Leafs have turned to Reimer, making it clear he is again the starter. What I don’t understand is why they went away from the hot goalie? When you have a hot player between the pipes you ride him. That’s just the way things work in the NHL because it doesn’t make any sense to do anything else. Even in Vancouver this season, where they have one of the leagues most consistent players in net they stuck to this principle. Roberto Luongo went down with a minor injury that probably could have seen him return a few days later. Instead he didn’t play again for 6 games, Corey Schneider his back-up was winning so they went with him. He posted a 5-1 record over 6 consecutive starts and everyone understood why. You don’t mess with a good thing.
It baffles me they were so eager to replace Gustavsson a second time. All they have to do is compare the wins and losses. What is happening here with the Leafs though goes beyond just stats though. The Leafs are simply a better team with the Monster in net. There is no way to dispute it. I think I should mention at this point that I despise the Leafs and everything about them except for Nikolai Borchevsky. But right now I live with a Leafs fan. A passionate Leafs fan who watches every game. This season I have seen far more Leafs than I ever would have cared to, but when I do watch them I see that Gustavsson has really grown into his starting role this season and he is playing with the confidence of his teammates. Reimer on the other hand hasn’t really shown any flashes of that goalie who started the season hot and he lets in far too many weak goals. The ones you know are weak because the goalie stays on the ice an extra second while maintaining his position as if to ask himself, “How did I let that one sneak through?” My point is we have no way of knowing ultimately what kind of goalie James Blank Reimer will be. But by removing Gustavsson abruptly during a streak in which he was carrying the team is misguided. Reimer has performed inconsistently in his latest return to starting duties. The Leafs must turn back to the Monster now and hope that they have not quelled all the momentum he had before they replaced him. At the moment he is their best starting goalie and if they hope to make the post-season this year he will have to be the one to take them there.
This whole scenario reminds me somewhat of the 06-07 Canadiens season. That season Cristobal Huet was the unquestioned starter in Montreal having beaten out Jose Theodore the season before, and he looked pretty good. No one was upset with him or calling for his replacement and he had the Habs sitting in 8th place owing to a 2 games-played advantage over the competition. Then, on February 14th, he got hurt. His call-up replacement was none other than Jaroslav Halak seeing his first NHL action. He was up and down at first but soon he found his rhythm and he ended the season on a 7-2 streak. It wasn’t about the stats though. It was the way the team was playing in front of Halak, you could tell there was a difference. All in all they went 10-5 under Halak and he led them to the edge of the playoffs. With one game remaining in the season the Canadiens faced a do-or-die situation against the Leafs. If they won they would grab the 8th playoff spot, if they lost they were out. There was another wrinkle though. Huet would be healthy for this game for the first time since his injury and the coaching staff would have a decision to make. For fans who had watched the Habs play the last month and a half there was no decision to be made, Halak was the man. The coaching staff did not see it this way. On the last day of the season, Saturday, April 7th they chose Huet to start in Toronto in what would be a horrible 6-5 loss to the Leafs that saw the team fall apart and Huet fail to match Halak’s brilliance in net. The New York Islanders would take their place in the playoffs.
I don’t want to alarm any Leaf fans but they are currently sitting in 8th spot in the Eastern Conference and they do play on Saturday, April 7th, the final day of the season, against the Canadiens in Montreal. Who do you want in net?
