Something has happened to the hockey writers at the Denver Post this season. Terry Frei, long known for his doom-and-gloom assessments of the Avalanche during the Coach Q era, has shifted to a much more balanced, rational tone this year. His colleague Adrian Dater, once an apparent kindred spirit to the wiseguys (and gals) here at MHH, has gone the other direction entirely. Now he's the Post's Chicken Little.
If you'll remember, Dater wrote this in a recent post at All Things Avs:
We’ll see what happens, but the Avs have bigger issues to contend with: namely, a team that has zero faith in its goaltending, one that is always looking over their shoulder worried about every shot against.
A bold statement that he couldn't cite to anything but his own intuition, but he stuck to it and probably still believes it.
Well, today Frei posted a preview of the road trip the Avs begin tonight against the Canucks in Vancouver. His first two sentences appear to have been written just for his coworker:
Sure, Avalanche goaltender Peter Budaj has been inconsistent in the first month of the season. But hasn't everybody? Indeed, no doubt about it. Budaj has been up and down all year, but his down has been a lot shallower than the down of the defense, which has been sucking something awful on a much more consistent basis. But what about that whole "zero faith" thing? Said Avalanche defenseman Scott Hannan: "We have trust in him. We have to keep playing well in front of him. In some of those games, I'm sure he might want a few goals back, but so would the 'D' and so would the team. It's a breakdown from the offensive zone back that causes scoring opportunities. Hmm. Interesting. That sounds extremely similar to what the valiant MHH community has been saying for some time now. Maybe Hannan is a liar, but at least Frei was able to get somebody to go on the record and didn't just toss the goalie under the freight train on a hunch. Oh, and in case you haven't read it yet, Frei made an excellent goalie-related blog post of his own the other day. It's the most even-handed thing I've seen written about Peter Budaj and the Avalanche "goalie situation" by any journalist so far this season. It's really good, even if I disagree with the argument that the Avs need to be goalie shopping if they're not already. But hey, compared to Dater's drivel, I'll gladly let that one slide. ADDENDUM: Oh, and Frei offers another accurate look at Colorado's woes so far this year over at the Four Letter.