Backstop to the Future?

Hockey mavens will tell you that a hot goalie can carry a team to a championship. The right goalie, in the right place, at the right time, can make history. If any team knows the power of a hot goalie in the playoffs, it is the Boston Bruins. Unfortunately, the hot goalies known to the Bruins all too frequently played for their opponents. Ken Dryden. Steve Penney. Bill Ranford. These are just a few of the goalies who stoned a powerful Bruins team when the games meant the most. Just some of the many who have sent the Bruins home short of their goal.

Do the Bruins have a hot goalie of their own waiting to take center stage? It’s a question often discussed. Can Thomas carry the team? Will Fernandez get a chance to make a run? Is this Tuukka’s year? One thing is for certain, the Bruins have spent the better part of fifteen years trying to find the answer, searching for the man who can carry them to the top.

Since the departure of Andy Moog at the end of the 1992 – 1993 season, the Bruins have had 26 different goaltenders man the cage. Some started hot, like Blaine Lacher, only to flame out quickly. Others showed long term promise, only to lose their game, like Andrew Raycroft. Some were retreads who never regained their form, like Felix Potvin or Jim Carey. Still others were journeymen at best, like Craig Billingon, Joey MacDonald or Tim Cheveldae. Some had questionable nicknames, like “My Cousin Vinnie” Riendeiu or John Casey “and his Technicolor Five Hole.” The one thing they all had in common: none of them were the answer between the pipes.

While each new Bruins season seemed to bring a new starting goalie to the big club, each new Bruins draft attempted to provide the hope of a new franchise goaltender. In the past 20 years, the Bruins have drafted 19 goalies. While some were taken with low picks intended to fill out minor league roster spots, others were taken with very high very valuable picks. The Bruins have long been criticized for not developing their own talent. At no position is this shortcoming more evident than goaltender.

The Bruins’ number one pick in 1994? Evgeni Ryabchicov. A young Russian goalie with a stand up style who the Bruins felt would be their goalie for years. Taken with the twenty-first pick over all, Ryabchicov was a complete bust who never played a game in the NHL. Goaltenders available that year and drafted after Boston’s pick included Jose Theodore, Marty Turco, Johan Hedberg, Evgeni Nabokov, Thomas Vokoun and John Grahame, who Boston did take with the number 229 pick in the draft. Oh, and the player selected at number 217? Some guy named Tim Thomas.

The Bruins thought so highly of their 1994 pick of Ryabchicov that in the 1995 draft, they used their second round pick to select Paxton Schaefer – another goaltender. Schaefer did make it to the Bruins for a few cups of coffee. He didn’t play in the NHL as much as the goaltenders selected after him – Brent Johnson, Vesa Toskala, Miikka Kiprusoff, Chris Mason and JS Aubin.

Between 1996 and 2001, the Bruins followed up the Schaefer pick by using three fifth round picks, a fourth round pick, a sixth round pick and a seventh round pick to draft goalies. Of the lot, Andrew Raycroft, selected in the fifth round of the 1998 draft, was the best.

In 2002, the Bruins again took a high draft shot at a long term solution in net. With their first round pick, number 29 overall, the Bruins selected Hannu Toivonen. 2002 hasn’t yet proven to be a strong year for goaltenders, with Cam Ward and Kari Lehtonen being the best of the goalies drafted in that year. Toivonen played a little for the Bruins and the Blues before heading back to Finland.

After drafting two more goalies in 2003 (Mike Brown in round 5 and Kevin Regan in round 9) the Bruins would not draft another goalie until selecting Michael Hutchinson in the third round of the 2008 draft. Perhaps the Bruins realized drafting goalies was not their strength and they decided to take some time off. (It should be noted that in those years when no goalie was selected, players such as Krejci, Karsums, Hunwick, Lashoff , Kessel, and Lucic were drafted by the Bruins. Perhaps there was method to their madness)

A review of the Bruins ability to asses goaltending does not provide a lot of encouragement for those looking for the next franchise goalie to emerge. Even the goaltender most frequently identified as their best chance in net, Tim Thomas, was repeatedly pushed aside by the Bruins. The team tried virtually any other option they could find before giving the job to Thomas.

Bruins fans now find themselves on the verge of the 2008 – 2009 playoffs. The team enters the homestretch with a troika of Thomas, Manny Fernandez and possibly Tuukka Rask as options for the playoffs. Thomas and Fernandez are unsigned unrestricted free agents following this season. Rask has had limited NHL exposure, but has shown some promise. Can he stand up to the level of play in the NHL for more than a handful of games? No one yet knows. In a very short period of time, the Bruins must decide who they will ride in the playoffs , who they will re-sign in the offseason and who their goalie will be for the next few years. After review of the Bruins’ track record in goaltending in the post-Moog era, is there any reason for confidence that the team will choose correctly?

Bruins fans have to hope. Hope that one of the current goalies can get hot for the playoffs. Hope that the team is ready to make the right choice for the future. Above all, hope that Michael Hutchinson will be ready by 2011.