{"id":119520,"date":"2021-10-07T11:56:04","date_gmt":"2021-10-07T15:56:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/?p=119520"},"modified":"2021-10-07T11:56:04","modified_gmt":"2021-10-07T15:56:04","slug":"curtis-mcelhinney-retires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2021\/10\/07\/curtis-mcelhinney-retires\/","title":{"rendered":"Two-Time Stanley Cup Champion Curtis McElhinney Retires"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former Tampa Bay Lightning goaltender <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/m\/mcelhcu01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Curtis McElhinney<\/a> has retired from professional hockey. McElhinney won back-to-back Stanley Cups with the Lightning in the past two seasons serving as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/v\/vasilan02.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Andrei Vasilevskiy<\/a>&#8216;s backup.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Curtis McElhinney retired from the NHL after 13 seasons.<\/p>\n<p>The 38-year-old goalie won the Stanley Cup each of the past two seasons with the Lightning as the backup to Andrei Vasilevskiy<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/2f21nO7zgg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/t.co\/2f21nO7zgg<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; NHL.com (@NHLdotcom) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NHLdotcom\/status\/1445882810305286144?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">October 6, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Curtis McElhinney Retires From the NHL<\/h2>\n<p>McElhinney had a long and successful career in the big leagues. In his last season with Tampa, he played 12 games, finishing with four wins, six losses, and two overtime losses. With a 3.09 goals against average and a .875 save percentage, he wasn&#8217;t the most effective goalie. However, the team in front of him was the best in the league, so his mistakes weren&#8217;t capitalized on as heavily. In his 13 year NHL career, he played for eight different teams, staying with the Columbus Blue Jackets the longest. He played 249 games, finishing with a 94-95-20 record. An overall save percentage of .907 and a GAA of 2.83 makes his career around the average mark for goaltenders.<\/p>\n<h3>Moving Forward For the Lightning<\/h3>\n<p>Obviously, Curtis McElhinney was not the most integral piece to their back-to-back rings. Vasilevskiy is still the starting goaltender and will be for a very long time. To replace McElhinney, the Lightning <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2021\/07\/28\/tampa-bay-lightning-sign-goaltender-brian-elliott\/\" target=\"_self\">signed Brian Elliott to the squad<\/a>. The veteran goaltender spent the last four seasons with the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2021\/10\/02\/puck-drop-preview-2021-22-flyers\/\" target=\"_self\">Philadelphia Flyers<\/a> and was putting up similar numbers to McElhinney. But it doesn&#8217;t really matter how effective their backup goaltender is, as they will be playing at most 15 games this season.<\/p>\n<p>However, there is a nagging concern for Tampa. If Vasilevskiy is out for an extended period of time, the Lighting are in deep trouble. Every season, their backup goaltender is a low-tier NHL goalie who can barely hold his own. Tampa always plays better in front of Vasilevskiy (for obvious reasons), but having a 90-10 split for goalies is tough on the starting goalie. Look for signs of fatigue from Vasilevskiy as the season goes on.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo:<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"4_K3EeJJTHp9MLdQFl8oQA\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1327566052\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'4_K3EeJJTHp9MLdQFl8oQA',sig:'S-ZNnfgxXGu3IVNC9vH-kgZbDMNHk-gWkgQFHQ3jolY=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1327566052',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former Tampa Bay Lightning goaltender Curtis McElhinney has retired from professional hockey. McElhinney won back-to-back Stanley Cups with the Lightning in the past two seasons serving as Andrei Vasilevskiy&#8216;s backup. Curtis McElhinney retired from the NHL after 13 seasons. The 38-year-old goalie won the Stanley Cup each of the past two seasons with the Lightning [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3605,"featured_media":119521,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4547,34,4548],"tags":[809],"class_list":["post-119520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lightning","category-hockey","category-news","category-nhl","tag-andrei-vasilevskiy"],"modified_by":"Noah Foster, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3605"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}