Lehtonen

[NoWayOut]

Word out of Dallas is Lehtonen has been nursing an injury. Quoted from Mark Stepneski and Stars Inside Edge....

“Kari has been battling a lower body injury for a little while,” Ruff said. “This is more the plan we had for him going along that we would give him the day after playing.”

Not much info other than that, but it does explain some things.

[mister_mcgoo]

Interesting...so do you think it's possible that the Stars only appeared to be decent defensively last year because they were getting excellent goaltending? And now that he's got a groin pull or something similar he's not able to save them from their poor d-zone play as well?

[NoWayOut]

Interesting...so do you think it's possible that the Stars only appeared to be decent defensively last year because they were getting excellent goaltending? And now that he's got a groin pull or something similar he's not able to save them from their poor d-zone play as well?

In the Stars thread I posted the latest vlog entry from Daryl Reaugh, In it he said that goaltending can mask or magnify any issues in front of the netminder. And he's right. The last couple of seasons the Stars had the same defensive issues and Kari bailed them out many many times. He stole a lot of wins for Dallas over that time. All this season he has looked half a heartbeat slow to react, which is all an NHL caliber shooter needs. It does explain so much, but more troubling is they seem hellbent on riding him while trying to right the whole ship instead of parking him on the shelf to heal properly. Yeah the backups are going to get beaten senseless but what's more important long-term?

[blayze]

Would certainly explain a lot about his performance this season.

Usually Lehtonen (or "Lehting'em in" as I've been referring to him lately) is a pretty solid goalie when healthy.

[NoWayOut]

I look back to training camp and wonder if the seeds of this were there at that time. Publicly the Stars said they wanted to rest Kari for the season ahead and let Rynnas and Lindback fight it out for the backup role. But what if Kari had been having issues even then? Or maybe that lighter than normal workload in preseason led to this by him not being fully game ready? All speculation though.

Standings be damned, Kari is their man in goal for the foreseeable future. No sense risking long term damage with him just to keep trying to get going in a season that is pretty well lost at this point.

[blayze]

Standings be damned, Kari is their man in goal for the foreseeable future. No sense risking long term damage with him just to keep trying to get going in a season that is pretty well lost at this point.

To hell with that logic, I need him in there to win my fantasy pool... even if he's playing on a wooden leg lol

- - - Updated - - -

Interesting...so do you think it's possible that the Stars only appeared to be decent defensively last year because they were getting excellent goaltending?

And yes... I would surmise this was the case.

[lektrix]

He's well enough to play all those games, so I think it's a cop out BS reason. Since when did it become acceptable to blame losses on injuries?