Jonathan Quick cost us the game last night. Well, not really, no one person ever costs a team a game, but he should have stopped at least one of the three goals that went in. Last night was really frustrating because none of the goals were necessarily bad goals to let in, but all were stoppable with solid positioning.
The first goal, he came out to face the shot but lost the puck off the rebound; while he searched for it (and even stepped away from the puck), Mika Pyorala made a quick move to his right and buried the puck. But hey, that happens to everyone. Still, it's not a good idea to start to stand up and move to your right when you don't know where the puck is.
The second goal was a team lapse and Mike Richards did take a hard shot, but Quick still could have gotten it. It's one of those goals where you'd like to see him make the save but you understand why he didn't. Still, a more positionally sound goaltender would have saved it. He dived to the left on the initial cross-ice pass instead of sliding over, then dove back to the right as the puck went behind the net; by the time the puck was passed up to Richards, Quick was so out of control that any shot where he wasn't was pretty much guaranteed to go in. His stick was out of position, he wasn't focused on the puck, he was kind of a mess.
The third goal he was kind of lazy getting back, although you can kind of understand why he didn't get there because who expects the puck to bounce off the endboards like that? And you can point to Sean O'Donnell for not tying up James Van Riemsdyk, but I still think Quick needs to be heading over there as the shot goes by, not waiting until he sees Van Riemsdyk's eyes get big to realize he's in trouble.
And see, that's the problem with Quick right now. The goals he's letting in aren't necessarily bad goals, but they're saves you've seen other goalies make. Goalies who make all the saves they should make are and don't get the ones they're not supposed to are called back-ups in the NHL. He needs to be up more on the balls of his feet, stop diving from side to side, be more controlled and be bigger in the net. (STOP HUNCHING OVER, WHY DO YOU KEEP DOING THAT???) Right now he looks like a roller hockey goaltender, flopping from one post to the other, and I don't know why.
Quick has a .900 SV% so far this season; that's just not good enough. It's easy to say, "Well, it wasn't really his fault because of this, this, and this," but at some point you have to stop making excuses and start believing the numbers. I like Quick and I think he's a good goalie, but if we're going to criticize Jason Labarbera and Mathieu Garon and Dan Cloutier and Erik Ersberg and Cristobal Huet and every goalie the Kings have ever had since Rogie Vachon, it's only fair that we criticize Quick. He needs to pick it up.
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