The Calgary Flames have almost completed the first month of their season. Through 14 games, two things have become readily apparent: goaltending isn’t an issue for the team, and man David Rittich has played an awful lot of hockey. In this wacky Thursday edition of What Would You Do Wednesday, we ask: just how should the Flames be balancing the workloads of their two goalies right now?
As of Wednesday morning, Rittich had played 650 minutes and 36 seconds in goal. That’s the second-most in the entire NHL. He’s started 11 of Calgary’s 14 games, tied with Vegas’ Marc-Andre Fleury and Anaheim’s John Gibson for the league lead. He’s on pace to play 64 games, which seems like a lot. For contrast, in his three previous North American seasons Rittich played 33, 33 and 45 games respectively – and he played the last 22 games of last season while battling a knee injury.
The challenge for the Flames right now is the decision on whether or not to keep riding Rittich has to effectively serve two masters. It’s probably not unfair to say that the Flames’ goaltending is the only part of their game that is unquestionably clicking – they’re riding the hot hand but Rittich is giving them a chance to win way more often than not, and you can’t say that about other parts of their game.
On the other hand, it’s worth working Talbot into action to see if he can keep building his game. Aside from a pretty blah first home outing as a Flame on Oct. 22 against Washington he’s been very sharp, and it’s probably worthwhile to set him up for a bounce-back game. Not only that, but the Flames rode Rittich hard last season in the first half and then had to gamble on a Mike Smith bounce-back in the second half; it would be helpful to build up Talbot’s confidence (or figure out any deficiencies in his game) in case the Flames need to rely on him down the stretch.
It’s hard to say if there’s a magic number for Rittich’s appearances overall, but at the very least balancing things out a little bit over the next few weeks would be a good start. So, is there an easy way for the Flames to balance things out?
There are three games left on this road trip and given Rittich’s string of strong performances, it seems probable that he gets two of the remaining three games – there’s a back-to-back set in Columbus and Washington over the weekend, so that’ll be split up. After that, November is a nicely spread out month in terms of the schedule:
Seems likely Rittich gets two of the remaining three games on the road trip given his performances. Rest of November? No back-to-backs, Flames even have three stretches of two or three days off in-between games. Once they get back from D.C., they play 12 games over 27 days with zero back-to-backs and three multi-day breaks. In theory, they could just rotate their two goalies and get them each a decent amount of time off.
Rittich has started 11 times, Talbot three times – these numbers are likely to be 13 and four, respectively, when they return from their road trip. How should the Flames divvy up the remaining dozen November starts in an ideal scenario? What would you do? Sound off in the comments!
