Goaltending is the hardest position in hockey.
The spotlight is on you for every save and every goal and both the adulation and resentment are intensified as the number of each of those increases.
It's a highly-skilled position but it also requires a ton of confidence and belief in yourself.
And once that confidence starts to slip, once you start to question if you can actually make those saves, it's gone and it's nearly impossible to get it back.
That's the position that Carolina Hurricanes netminder Antti Raanta now finds himself in.
This season hasn't gone the way anybody imagined when the 34-year-old goalie re-signed with the Canes on a discounted, one-year deal.
Raanta was coming off of a season that saw him go 19-3-3 in the regular season with a 0.910 save percentage, 2.23 goals against average and four shutouts.
In the playoffs, he posted a 0.909 save percentage and helped carry Carolina through the first-round series against the New York Islanders,
By all intents and purposes, he looked perfectly primed for another season in a backup role.
That hasn't been the case.
In 14 games this season, the Finnish netminder is 6-5-1. That's not so bad, right?
Well, the problem is the 0.854 save percentage which is the worst in the entire league for goalies with at least five starts.
Raanta has been bleeding goals this season and while the defensive support in front of him hadn't been great, at the end of the day, you need your goaltender to make a save.
It's also been hard, because Raanta was never expected to take on this much of a workload either. A freak medical incident sidelined presumed starter Frederik Andersen and forced Raanta into a more prominent role.
But even when Pyotr Kochetkov started to pick up more games, Raanta still couldn't lift his game back up.
The Hurricanes reached a breaking point with Raanta following a 6-5 overtime loss to the Nashville Predators on Dec. 15.
The following day he was placed on waivers and after he went unclaimed, he was reassigned to the AHL.
According to Don Waddell who appeared on the Hurricanes' radio pregame show on Dec. 17, Raanta wasn't sure what he was going to do, but decided he wanted the chance to rebound and so accepted the reassignment.
In two starts with the Chicago Wolves, Raanta went 1-0-1 with a 0.875 save percentage, allowing six goals on 48 shots.
While the numbers aren't promising, perhaps a win, a shock to the system and some holiday time off helped him reset.
He'll have to hope so, because this is probably his last chance in Carolina after he was called back up on Tuesday and is the presumed starter given that it's the second half of a back-to-back.
But the stage couldn't be set any better for him though: a weak opponent in the Montreal Canadiens who Raanta has a career record of 8-1-0 with a 0.927 save percentage against and who he shutout the last time he played.
But if this game doesn't go well and Father Finn suffers his sixth straight NHL loss, then perhaps fans should remember the good times of Raanta's career in Carolina.
Remember a charismatic, team-first player who was part of a Jennings Trophy tandem, won a few playoff series and even set a home win-streak record.
Just don't pile onto a guy that would already be mentally sunken because a loss tonight could seal the deal on an NHL career.