The Vancouver Canucks won a playoff game with a goalie who played backup for its AHL affiliate throughout the season, illustrating the need for three or more capable goaltenders for NHL franchises
The Vancouver Canucks won a playoff game with a goalie who played backup for its AHL affiliate throughout the season, illustrating the need for three or more capable goaltenders for NHL franchises
Nine days ago, Arturs Silovs was playing for Abbotsford in the AHL. Today, he won an NHL playoff game for the Vancouver Canucks.
Silovs wasn't the only reason the Canucks won. Brock Boeser scored a hat trick, and Elias Lindholm found an overtime winner to give Silovs run support. But, the mostly AHL starter was capable enough to find a win in a playoff situation against a Nashville team that has been red hot for months. What he did is both impressive and necessary for the Canucks, a Stanley Cup contender, to keep their playoff chances alive. Had Silovs not been up to the task, the Canucks might be heading home with a 2-2 series, instead of a controlling 3-1 lead.
All this illustrates something that the Red Wings have emphasized throughout the season — the need for more than two goaltenders who can start at the NHL level. Now, Silovs isn't someone Vancouver would plan to lean on for wins all season. He's an AHL goalie right now, not a goalie they're building around. Yet he was the goalie they needed in the end when injuries to Thatcher Demko and Casey DeSmith put him in the limelight. NHL teams don't need two goalies. They need three, sometimes even four.
“It's an interesting position right now around the league in goaltending, that everyone is looking for a goaltender whether it's a one or two or three — and most teams needed three goalies,” Detroit general manager Steve Yzerman said April 19.
For the Red Wings, a three-headed tandem of Alex Lyon, James Reimer and Ville Husso when healthy led the charge throughout the 2023-24 season, and it's safe to assume that a similar system will continue in the future. It wasn't just one goaltender who earned wins throughout the season. Rather, it was a committee approach. There were sacrifices for this, as three rostered goaltenders meant fewer roster manipulations at forward and defense with only a single reserve player for each position at multiple times during the season. But, this strategy at goalie netted Detroit some success.
“All three of those guys at different points in the season had a very positive impact on us and played games that helped us win and put us in a position to almost make the playoffs," Yzerman said. "But having said that, they need to be better, we need to be better in all aspects of keeping the puck out of our net. Not only with our goalies, but our play defensively, collectively not just our D corps, our forwards as well. I think it's really my job — and it's not a headline making statement — but to try and look to see if I can improve our team in any which way, and I will do that at every position.”
It's going to take three goaltenders or more to get the Red Wings where they want to be next season — the same as it took three or four to get the Canucks to a position they want to be in the playoffs. They don't have an elite starter who can give 50 to 60 games each season, and even if they did, injuries could destroy those plans anyway.
Who exactly those goaltenders will be is still up in the air, but Lyon and Husso (coming back from injury) are both still under contract. The Red Wings' three-goalie strategy needs a third pillar, and whether that's added through the promotion of Sebastian Cossa or the signing of a free agent, another goaltender is needed all the same. The exact makeup is up to Yzerman's vision.
Even for teams that made the playoffs, goaltending depth is absolutely necessary due to the crazy whims of the game. Injuries, cold streaks — really any sort of bump in the road — can compromise a team's goaltending unit at any moment of the season. Interruptions come by chance, not by planning, and the more goaltenders a team can rely on, the better off they are.
Silovs' success represents a rare case where a team needed to rely on such a deep backup goaltender to bring a playoff win home, but it reinforced the point that Yzerman brought up in his end-of-season press conference. If Detroit wants to make the playoffs and win in them, it needs goaltending depth. Silovs' playoff win is just another example of why.
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