Miikka Kiprusoff has a shot at the most wins in a single NHL season

Calgary Flames goaltender Miikka Kiprusoff's ability to handle an incredible workload not only gave his team a chance to win seemingly every game, but also posed the question: Could he become the first goalie to win 50 games in a season? Eric Duhatschek delved into that possibility during the 2008-09 campaign.

There was a time when 50 goals was a virtually unassailable scoring mark in the NHL, a measure of performance that only the nicknamed few – the Rockets, Boom Booms and Golden Jets – were able to achieve.

Fifty goals eventually became a significant, but not impossible scoring standard, as the NHL schedule lengthened from the 50 games it took Maurice Richard to break the 50-goal barrier for the first time to a high of 84 games played during the two-year experiment with neutral-site contests.

Is Richard’s achievement – the same number of goals scored in far fewer games – more significant than the 14 players who made it to 50 in the 1992-93 season, including two (Jeremy Roenick and Brendan Shanahan) who both reached the milestone in the 84th game of the season? Of course. It’s an apples-to-oranges comparison, akin to attaching an asterisk to Roger Maris’ old home run record.

Still, it doesn’t change the fact that 50 remains a magic number in hockey – and the new elusive standard as it relates to No. 50 is goalie wins. Even in an era of overtime wins and shootout victories, of goalies playing 70-plus games per season the way the stalwarts of the 1950s – the Plantes and Halls and Sawchuks – did, no one has yet to achieve that win total.

For the longest time, the benchmark was set at 47 – established by the Philadelphia Flyers’ Bernie Parent in the 78-game 1973-74 season. For more than three decades, Parent’s mark held up until finally, two years ago, the New Jersey Devils’ Martin Brodeur eclipsed the record by winning 48, the same year Roberto Luongo also tied Parent’s mark with 47 victories. Goalies are getting closer, but they’re just not quite getting over the top.

The latest goalie to take a run is the Calgary Flames’ Miikka Kiprusoff, who was on pace for 50 at the all-star break, but got bogged down in a week-long slump and now would need an extraordinary finish to get there. That’s the trouble with 50 – so many things need to go right. You need to stay healthy (something Brodeur and Luongo couldn’t do this year). You need to stay sharp. Your team needs to be competitive. Your coach needs to believe that a heavy workload doesn’t undermine success in the latter stages of the season, when burnout can become a factor.

Kiprusoff’s coach, Mike Keenan, once played Grant Fuhr a record 79 times in a season when both were with the St. Louis Blues, and he figures fatigue is mostly a mental, as opposed to a physical, issue. Accordingly, if Kiprusoff – or Fuhr before him or Ron Hextall before that – can get enough rest between games, Keenan is not afraid to ride him until the bitter end.

“He’s playing that style of game, where the most important outcome for him is winning, as opposed to being distracted by maybe a questionable goal,” Keenan said. “When it’s really an important turnaround time in the game, he’s been able to concentrate and through his athleticism and his ability to play the position, he’s given the team a timely save. It’s a mental skill that you develop.”

Keenan’s analysis indirectly addresses the issue of how good a year Kiprusoff is really having – because his goals-against average and save percentage fall decidedly in the middle of the pack. No matter. Night after night, he has made those aforementioned timely saves – and in that respect, his season has been decidedly Fuhr-like. In Fuhr’s best years with the Oilers, his annual GAA fell into the 3.50 range – nothing special statistically, but he was usually there with the game on the line to ensure his team held onto the ‘W.’

In those days, the Oilers used to platoon Fuhr with Andy Moog in the regular season to ensure that the former was fresh for the playoffs – something that’s become common again in the post-lockout era, where the teams advancing to the championship in each of the past three seasons gave their starters frequent rest breaks during the year.

In fact, in the past three years, the only goalie to play in a Stanley Cup final with 60 or more games on his regular season resume was the Carolina Hurricanes’ Martin Gerber in the spring of ’06 – and Gerber ultimately lost the starting job to eventual Conn Smythe Trophy winner Cam Ward early in the playoffs.

Kiprusoff’s best playoff came in ’04, a year when he joined the Flames in a trade and made only 38 regular season appearances for them. Last year, in a 76-game campaign, Kiprusoff was pulled twice by Keenan in a seven-game, opening-round loss to the San Jose Sharks and was simply not as sharp as he was in his first three playoffs on behalf of the Flames.

So Keenan is running something of a risk by riding Kiprusoff hard. Presumably, that’s also why Kiprusoff’s exclusion from the All-Star Game was no hardship for the quiet Finn – he was just as happy to spend a week off, at home, resting and getting ready for the stretch drive. For someone who spends hours every day stretching to improve his flexibility – something that accounts for his Gumby-like ability to go post-to-post – the break was a brief, but valuable chance to exhale for a week, before continuing his pursuit of 50.

And how would that be – to win 50 and get to where no goaltender has gone before?

“I’m not thinking about that,” Kiprusoff said. “I’m just thinking about tomorrow – one game at a time.”

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