Dallas Stars: Goalie Struggles Could Impact Playoff Success

The Dallas Stars have had trouble finding a hot goalie as of late. If those issues continue, their Playoff success could be limited.

The Dallas Stars had hopes of creating a great two-goalie system for the 2015-16 season. After Jim Nill’s trade during the summer, the front office had formed a pair of goalies featuring Kari Lehtonen, who’s played for the team since 2009-10 and Antti Niemi, who helped the Chicago Blackhawks win the Stanley Cup in the same season.

As both 32-year-old goalies were united in Dallas, they already knew a little bit about each other from playing as teammates on Team Finland.

Since the season started back in October, the duo has provided quality relief for each other, as one has usually been hot when the other has been struggling. However, problems began to arise with the situation when the Stars lost seven of eight games in early January, giving up at least four goals in four of those games.

They hit another low point in late February when they lost seven of eight again, except this time the goaltending was much worse, as opponents combined to score 35 goals throughout the stretch.

The month of March has not been as bad, in terms of wins and losses, as the Stars have gone 3-2-2 through the first half, but the goaltending still does not look solid. Lehtonen and Niemi have given up really bad goals and are the cause for a lot of the lopsided losses the team has seen lately. In fact, Niemi, who some thought was the clear No. 1 at one point in time, has been struggling since mid-February.

The case could be made that injuries have ravaged the Stars’ blue line, but the young pieces that have been put in place are thriving.

Besides looking bad on the ice, Lehtonen and Niemi have also looked bad on the stat sheets. According to NHL.com, Niemi is 36th out of 45 goalies in the league with a GAA of 2.76 while Kari Lehtonen is 41st out of 45 with a 2.93. It gets even worse when looking at save percentage as Lehtonen is 42nd out of 45 with a .903 while Niemi is 43rd out of 45 with a .901.

Those are scary numbers for a team that is expected to make some noise in the Playoffs this season but head coach Lindy Ruff still has confidence in his goaltenders (via SportsDay):

"“So I think overall, it’s been a win-win for us. I know our overall numbers aren’t as good as some of the other goalies in the league, but I look at the number of wins and say that the goalies have been successful.”"

It’s great that the Stars have two goaltenders who have the capability of starting games and leading the team to victory, but if both are not playing at their highest level in April, the Playoffs could get ugly for the West’s best.

Take a look at the other top teams in the conference. Goalies like Jonathan Quick, Corey Crawford and Pekka Rinne are all possible Playoff matches. Though the Stars have had success against guys like Crawford and Rinne, they still have the capability of suddenly locking it down and creating an air-tight cover on the net, something that we haven’t seen out of either Stars goaltender this season.

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Injured players will eventually return, making it a little easier on the goalies, but as of right now, things are not great for the Stars’ duo of netminders, and they’ll need to get their games back on track to avoid a disappointing end to a great season.