After a mixed showing from Alex Lyon against Colorado, the Red Wings are forced to make a goaltending decision with the trade deadline looming
After a mixed showing from Alex Lyon against Colorado, the Red Wings are forced to make a goaltending decision with the trade deadline looming
For a goaltender who let in five goals, Alex Lyon did about all Detroit could ask of him.
On a night when the Nathan MacKinnon-led Avalanche ripped his defense apart, Lyon kept the Red Wings in the fight through much of the game by smothering a plethora of scoring threats. The majority of the breakaways, one-timers and waiting backhanders he faced couldn’t foil him for the better part of 30 minutes. And yet he was human, letting the Avalanche build a 5-2 lead in the last 10 minutes of the second period and earning a seat on the bench. As the trade deadline draws to its final 24 hours, such a performance begs the question of whether Lyon is the goalie Detroit should lean on for its probable playoff appearance.
Don’t overreact from one rough patch — Lyon has been a panacea for a Detroit goalie room that could’ve imploded otherwise. With Ville Husso injured and James Reimer inconsistent early on, the Red Wings needed Lyon to deliver. Whereas Lyon came in with the expectation of being the third-goalie in the Red Wings’ rotation, he exceeded that role and became a hard-to-beat starter in a league where lots of teams don’t really have that.
Lyon isn’t without his flaws, though. Against a truly elite team like Colorado — just two years removed from a Stanley Cup and featuring a lineup of transcendent stars — Lyon got licked in the end. He weathered the lion’s share of the Avalanche’s attempts, stopping all three high-danger shots he faced and stopping 10 out of 12 medium-danger types. Yet Lyon shares the blame for some of the goals he let in, too, including a pair of Cale Makar point shots that fooled him through traffic.
Nobody’s perfect, especially a goalie facing the All-Star Avs, but Lyon’s performance tread into the murky territory of average at a time when the Red Wings need definitive answers.
And for the past little stretch, Lyon’s longevity as the goalie solution has fallen into question. He has clocked a save percentage south of .900 in his past four starts, allowing four or more goals in the past three. Meanwhile, Detroit has continued to rely on Lyon well beyond any role he has ever played in the NHL. Before this season, his career high usage was 15 games for Florida last year. Now, he has more than doubled that to 31 games and counting, many of which have come in rows. Such a burden is new ground territory for Lyon, and his game is showing a few stress fractures this past week.
Now is the final time the Red Wings can bring in reinforcements. If they want to give Lyon some help, they are forced to make a decision before the trade deadline draws to a close Friday at 3 p.m. ET. If general manager Steve Yzerman believes in Lyon’s overall play to stay firm, he can stand pat. Otherwise, he’ll have to trade for a goaltender and likely give up significant assets. The likes of Jacob Markstrom and Jake Allen come to mind as options, though a more valuable trade offer might lure a team to trade a different starter. All that is to say, it’s crunch time for Yzerman to settle on a solution.
None of this negates what Lyon has done thus far this season. He still ranks 14th in goals saved above expected per 60, according to Moneypuck. Much of that is propped up by Lyon’s ability to make consistent highlight-reel saves, just like he did through most of his start against the Avalanche. He’s the sixth-best goaltender in high danger scenarios, evidenced by a .114% save percentage above expected on unblocked high danger chances. Weeding through the stats jargon, that means that he’s better than most other goalies at getting in front of shots that probably should be goals.
But Lyon isn’t perfect, and it’s those stretches like his last 10 minutes against the Avalanche that bring pause. Come playoff time, teams with a higher concentration of talent will get their chances against Detroit, just like the Avalanche did. Against Florida, Boston and the New York Rangers, elite players will find ways to pepper him with chances, and Lyon has to find a way to stop them.
Even if Wednesday marked about as good of an outing as imaginable when Lyon let in five goals, they were still five goals that sunk the Red Wings. And if they think someone else could do differently, the clock is ticking for them to make a move.
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