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His numbers improved as the season went along because the team improved as it learned McLellan's system. He really does seem to be a system goalie, as people have said for years. Fans have been fighting that claim for just as long, but I think that it's now hard to deny that it's true. His save percentage was remarkably consistent under Sutter and Stevens and then went into the toilet as soon as Sutter's defensive system went out of the window.
You might argue that it's natural for goaltenders to look good behind good teams and bad behind bad teams, but Quick's backups have consistently outplayed him behind the same teams, especially when the teams were bad, as was the case the past two years. If you have a good team, he'll get the job done, but he's not going to routinely bail out a bad team and help them to over-perform like some other goaltenders can.
I think that it has a lot to do with his style that relies heavily on the skaters to play sound defense so that he can be more aggressive and cut off angles by coming out to challenge shooters. Basically, he doesn't seem like a good fit for a rebuilding team like this one or Seattle, so I'm not sure that it'd be smart to take him in the expansion draft, but it'd help LA to move on sooner if it happened. |
