Plus/Minus: Islanders 3, Devils 2, bullet narrowly dodged

Or at least for the next game. Buy out what’s his name at the first opportunity. There are enough goalies in the system. Grabner has to start burying all those breakaway chances. Anyway, they’re nine points out of the playoffs with three quarters of the season left and a game or two in hand on everybody. Hey, you never know.

Time for Wishart to get his chance

- Jurcina letting his man go on the “kick-in” play was inexcusable
+ Glad that McDonald is getting going again, the Pittsburgh game must have been rock-bottom for him
+FNGO
+ JT played great in the defensive zone
- this Nino debacle needs resolution asap
- Katie Strang and Arthur Staple for not putting the screws to Cap/Snow on why the 5th overall pick is scratched 4 straight games. It’s like no one has the balls to ask “why” to these people.

Wish the Isles could get more out of those two but good to see some positive contribution from that line.

Anybody notice Haley today? I didn’t, and I like the guy. Grabner has to start burying those chances, that said, maybe he’s heating up.

-JT no goal

++++Montoya: He is the number one guy on this team
+FNGO
+We finally caught a break on the Parise "goal"
+Moulson scores and Bailey Scores. He needs to shoot more

-JT no goal in 10 games (an empty netter was his last against Washington). And no point in 5. This guy needs to get going. He’s working, but there have been no results in a while. No multipoint game since the Florida game. half his points came in 2 games.
-Nino seems pretty annoyed after the twitter post. Wonder what’s up.
-—Mottau still on the team.

1 SOG 1 Hit and a +1 in 11:12 of ice time. Hasn’t look out of place vs good competition. The offense will come.

He now should be worked as much as the Rangers work Lundquist. He clearly made a statement with yesterday’s performance.

To date, Lundquist has played in 16 games, Montoya 8. Huge difference. And if things stay the same (as far as rotation for both teams), by the end of the year it would be even a bigger difference. The few games that Montoya was injured, the things were going he would have been lucky to get one of those starts.

I could not care less how many goalies the Rangers have compared to the Isles. I care about the best goalie getting (by far) the majority of starts. That is how you give your team the best chance to make the playoffs. And making the playoffs is goal, is it not? Trade value, at this point in the season, is meaningless. Unless you think the objective at the beginning of the season was to get the best value you can for Nabakov. I don’t think so- the objective is and was to make the playoffs- first and foremost. Therefore you play your best goalie in most of the starts and only rest him occasionally. If you want to keep 3 goalies, the other two can split the remaining games.

So lets go back over the ‘math.’
Lundquist has 16 games to Biron’s 5, or 76% of the starts.
Montoya, on the other hand, has 8 starts out of 21 games, or 38%.
The difference between starts for Lundquist and Montoya is 38 percentage points. Big difference.
Over the course of a year, say 80 games, Lundquist will start 60 of them. If things stayed the same on the Isles, Montoya would start 30. Therefore, we can safely conclude that if all things stay the same, Lundquist would start twice as many games as Montoya. And that would be, if you want to make the playoffs, crazy.

And therein is the problem, at least for me. Staying with the math, if you still want to keep the 3 goalies (I don’t), and you want to give the other two more of the starts, then I still would suggest you still give your number one goalie 60% of the starts, and let the other two split the remaining 40%. And for Montoya, that 60% is much more than his current 38%.
So, can you agree on your best goalie getting 60% of the starts? Thats much more than Montoya had been getting (and please forget the time he was injured, that was meaningless- he would have been lucky to get two of those 6 starts- even if you give him two of those starts his percentage is still less than 50% of all the games played).

Kyle 2, Post 1. Another very good game by Kyle, though, highlighted by helping to create his own breakaway, and then setting up Grabner for a breakaway and nearly slamming in the rebound.

Streit: B. One bad giveaway, but set up one of Grabner’s breakaways and created another good scoring chance. Also hustled back (like he was shot from a cannon) to cancel out a 3-on-2 when he was caught.
2.956 (21 games played)

Staios: C+. The first two periods he was playing well. Made a couple bad mistakes in the 3rd. (I don’t blame him much for Larsson’s goal— that was almost a 4-on-2.)
2.222 (21)

Hamonic: B. So-so for Hamonic.
3.107 (21)

AMac: B-. So-so for AMac.
2.679 (21)

The Muppets: B+. Solid throughout.

Jurcina: C. Has to share some of the blame for the 2nd goal. Also caught in between on the 3rd.
2.092 (12)

Mottau: C-. Was on his way to a good game until his bad turnover caught him in between for the 2nd goal. The top 3 defensemen averaged about 25 minutes. Mottau played 9:19, Jurcina 15:56. Surely Isles can find someone in Bridgeport who can play 9:19 more effectively.
1.829 (14)

Not in action:

Eaton:
2.131 (16)