not sure I agree that he should have gone in game 1. as others have said 1 - 2 of those goals were pretty bad. let’s just say that budaj was in, and he stops one of those poor goals. the game was 3 - 1 when they red wings had their letdown. that game could have gone to OT!

I realize it’s not certain at all and hindsight is 20/20, but Theodore sounded deathly ill for game 1. he needed to be sat. But again, game 2 and tonight he should be back to starting. he’s the #1. hard to pin any blame for last game on him, and he should be at 100% tonight.

now if only the rest of the damn team wasn’t hurt…

If playing Budaj guaranteed a win, I don’t think any Avs fan would be against giving him the start. But if you assume the two goalies are what they were before this series, which is the only logical way to look at the issue, Theodore gives you a much better chance of winning the game than Budaj does.

Further, if you start Budaj over Theodore and you plan to re-sign Theodore in the offseason, you risk having a goalie with confidence issues.

For the short-term as well as long-term good, you HAVE to start Theodore tonight.

thanks for the oh-so-subtle spelling correction!

Firefox auto-spell FTW

Not that it’s all his fault, it’s definitely not, but he has to be better. he should at least have three of the above 4.

Nevertheless I have no problem with him starting game 3 (I do have a problem with the training staff letting him go in 1 and 2. Budaj is more than serviceable backup. Giguere was out for 3 games last year for the Ducks and they had no reservations using Bryzgolav. The wings had no reservations about using Osgood either this season). If he’s sick, especially so sick he couldn’t sit on the bench after he was pulled he shouldn’t have been in the game.

and yeah, it is kind of nice to see a little dissension for a change

I do not concur. I enjoy the “blogger circle-jerk”

I totally get what you’re saying. But I think the flu is being over exaggerated. I would only put the 4th goal in game 1 on Theo, and even that would have required a pretty good effort to make the save after a bad turnover by the Avs and a nice cross ice pass by the Wings. Otherwise, you have the perfect Franzen deflection, the Salei ill-advised hip check leading to the Cleary goal and the McLeod gaffe leading to the Zetterberg goal. I don’t think the flu was a factor. And I don’t think Budaj would have made the saves on the first 3 goals.

I was going to expand on this on my site this morning but got caught up with work. I’ll probably paste what I say here into a new post like I did with my A2Y one

I don’t think starting Theodore is a terrible idea. But I do fear that one goal is all it will take to break this squad. With Budaj in, an automatic one-goal buffer is added to that breaking point.

That’s my main concern over starting Theodore. I could be overestimating the teams fragility but based on game 2, they didn’t appear to have anything left in the tank after goal number 3.

When it was announced Theodore was starting this game, I certainly wasn’t upset. I think either goaltender is a reasonable choice at this point but if Theodore is still feeling the effects of the flu, he simply should not be playing. And certainly should not have gone in the dressing room.

Manning up in this situation is completely different for a goaltender. A forward/defenceman can slack off a bit while on the ice but a goaltender cannot have any slack, especially against the Wings. When the flu takes you down, you can’t will your muscles to move that glove hand faster or push across the crease with more speed.

And it seemed pretty evident that this was the problem in game 1. His movements were sluggish, he was slow to react and his head didn’t appear to be in the game.

While I appreciate that Theodore is the #1 goaltender, there is no loyalty when it comes to winning. So I hope Q made this choice based on performance, not based on loyalty.