In a week when NHL goalies were front-and-centre again, mostly because of renewed attempts to monitor and otherwise shrink the size of their equipment, the question came up as all the second-round series were morphing into a collection of laughers:
How much of a factor was fatigue in the slight, but discernible decline, in the overall performance of some of the NHL's leading goaltending lights?
Or to put it another way, do NHL teams play their starting goaltenders too much in the regular season, only to discover there isn't enough left in the tank to get them through four grueling playoff rounds?
For years now, the New Jersey Devils have been riding their starter, Martin Brodeur, hard from September until June in their Stanley Cup years. But now that he's 36 (or will be this coming Tuesday), does that heavy workload continue to make sense, even for the goaltender that may eventually win more games than any in history?
No goaltender is ever going to admit to being tired when he's playing — and few want to use fatigue as an excuse even when the season is over, because the majority of the NHL's masked men want to play every minute of every game whenever possible. But it may be instructive to note that in the first decade of Brodeur's career, or when he was in his prime and better able to handle the demands of an demanding playing schedule, his playoff goals-against average was lower than his regular-season goals-against average in nine of his first 10 years (ignoring 1995-96 because the Devils missed the playoffs that season).
In three of the past four seasons, just the opposite occurred — Brodeur's goals-against average went up in the playoffs. This year, playing against the New York Rangers in the opening round (and despite having far more career wins on his playoff resume than any active goalie), he was just so-so, in the Devils' opening-round loss.
Once upon a time, in that sort of evenly matched series, the odds were that Brodeur would be a difference maker. He wasn't.
There was a belief that when the Devils signed Kevin Weekes as Brodeur's back-up, one of the primary motivations was to reduce his regular-season workload so he'd be sharper for the playoffs. But coach Brent Sutter just couldn't bring himself to do it. For a time, the Devils were in that tightly packed group of teams just trying to qualify for a playoff spot. When it looked as if they'd finally opened up enough of a gap, well, there was always first place in the division to play for.
As a result, Weekes played just 393 minutes all season, as Brodeur racked up a league-leading 4,635 minutes of playing time, the second highest total of his career. The highest total came the previous year, when he was in for 4,697 minutes, which also led the league. Brodeur's Devils won their opening-round series in '07, but lost in the second round to the Ottawa Senators where he was outplayed by the immortal Ray Emery. In the past five seasons, Brodeur has two first-round losses, two second-round losses on his resume, buttressed up a trip to the '03 Stanley Cup final, when New Jersey knocked off the Anaheim Ducks in seven games.
Among the NHL's heavy minute-munchers between the pipes, it wasn't just Brodeur that had a less-than-stellar playoff by their usual standards. In Calgary, Miikka Kiprusoff, now 31, was not the factor that he'd been in previous years for the Flames in an opening-round loss to the San Jose Sharks. Age shouldn't be an issue with Kiprusoff, although there are some issues about his commitment to conditioning. But Flames' coach Mike Keenan was reluctant to trust either of the young goalies in the Flames' system to play any games earlier in the season, so until they signed Curtis Joseph after Christmas, it was Kiprusoff all the way. He ended up playing 4,398 minutes.
Similarly, the case could be made in Vancouver that the reason the Canucks fell three points shy of a playoff spot was that Roberto Luongo didn't produce quite the same level of goaltending his second year on the Left Coast as he did in his first. Luongo, too, is used to playing heavy minutes — four consecutive seasons above 4,000 minutes of playing time per year. Is it time for the Canucks to spell him more next year?
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