Steve Valiquette

We're going to bring in this guy and this guy because our D was small last year.

The shot quality that Connor Hellebuck faced last year, guys, it went up tenfold from the year before.

The year before, when he won Vezina and MVP, they had the best shot quality team in the league, best environment, one of the bottom three environments this year.

So Connor Hellebuyck certainly felt it.

It reflected his own save percentage.

It reflected his expected goals.

It reflected the goals that were scored over his glove because there's more time and space.

And that's one of the biggest enhancers we see.

I looked at that a lot this week because I was looking at Dustin Wolf, very similar issue there for him in Calgary as Hellebuck had in Winnipeg, which is when players in the NHL right now have time and space, especially when it's a high danger chance, it's like giving them an extra 20% chance to score on some of these scoring chances.

And that has to be factored into the shot quality.

And some goalies are just playing in a horrifically bad environment.

I can imagine Hellbuck felt that this year, even if he didn't know it statistically.

And he's saying to himself, you know what?

If we're not going to clean it up and I'm not going to have a chance to win, I don't know if I want to be here and be a part of this.

But, you know, look, we know who he is and what he can do and what he's capable of.

But for what it's worth, you know, Connor Hellbuck hasn't won them a lot of playoff series either.

You know, I thought that Dobish got off to a great start.

One of the biggest saves he made was really early on in the first period against Chernak, where he just stepped out and took... Yeah, you remember that one?

So, you know what he's doing there, Kipper, is he's giving you a different look.

You can pre-scout me all you want, but if you think you're going to come down the middle on me with time and space, as Chernak did there...