As far back as I can remember, the Flyers have hit the midway point of the season with the same issues each year. Someone important always seems to have a concussion (this year it's Simon Gagne, previously it has been Keith Primeau or Eric Lindros), someone always is under-achieving (Daniel Briere), and the backup goalie (Antero Niittymaki) is always doing better than the guy dubbed numero uno at the start of the season (Martin Biron).I thought I might have been overreacting to the fact that the Flyers have nine points in Niittymaki's last five starts (as of January 15), while the Flyers have lost five of Biron's last eight starts, but then I did some research and realized that we always go through this.
To put the revolving door that is our goaltending situation into perspective, since 1993-94, when Martin Brodeur took over as the starting goalie for the New Jersey Devils, the Flyers have had 18 goalies stand between the pipes. Don't believe me? Here's the complete list: Dominic Roussel, Tommy Soder-strom, Frederic Chabot, Ron Hex-tall, Garth Snow, Sean Burke, John Vanbiesbrouck, Jean-Marc Pelletier, Brian Boucher, Roman Cechmanek, Maxime Oullet, Neil Little, Robert Esche, Jeff Hackett, Antero Niittymaki, Martin Biron, Michael Leighton, and Martin Houle. Worse yet, seven different goalies have started a playoff game, six different goalies have led the Flyers in games played in a season, and five times a guy has started a playoff game despite not starting the majority of the regular season games! During this time period, Hextall has had the longest stay, five consecutive years, but only two of those years was he the top dog during the playoffs.
In comparison, since the strike-shortened 1994-95 season, Brodeur has been between the pipes for at least 80 percent of the Devils games each season, and always was the number one goalie in the playoffs, leading them to three Stanley Cup titles. He has been so consistent that NHL video games rarely even find out the name of the Devils backup goalie! It's usually an unnamed goalie equipped with a plain white mask and generic black pads.
Don't get me wrong, this problem for the Flyers dates back much further than 1993-94, and includes guys like Ken Wregget, Pete Peeters, and Mark Laforest, but I figured that a good jumping off point for this discussion would be the start of the Brodeur era.
So here we are in January of 2008 and the Flyers face the same problem they've had pretty much every year since 1993-94. So the question remains, 18 goalies later, how did we get here? More importantly, how can we stop it?
For starters, the Flyers need to pick a young goalie (Niittymaki) and stick with him. Goalies are like high schoolers. They're self-conscious, they have fragile psyches and they need constant approval from their peers. But every time the Flyers have a good young goalie, they give them the job and then yank it away in favor of a new high-priced acquisition. It happened with Brian Boucher after the 1999-2000 season. It happened with Robert Esche right before the 2003-04 season, and it happened again with Niittymaki last season.
So why stick with Niittymaki? Let's go back a few years. In 2003-04, Niittymaki, just 23 years old, filled in for injured goalies Jeff Hackett and Robert Esche and gave up just three goals in three wins. Naturally, the Flyers then traded for 37-year-old Sean Burke, who won just six of his 13 starts, and Niitty was sent back down to the Phantoms. The following year (when the NHL season was cancelled due to a lockout), Niittymaki led the Phantoms to an AHL title. Then in 2005-06, Niittymaki played great down the stretch, replacing an ineffective Robert Esche, but Flyers coach Ken Hitchcock chose (poorly) to ride Esche in the playoffs. During that season, Niittymaki led Finland to a Silver Medal in the 2006 Winter Olympics and earned the MVP of the games, but apparently wasn't worthy of leading the Flyers in the playoffs.
Now, I will admit that Niittymaki didn't look so hot last year, as his glove-hand seemed to go missing, but wouldn't it have been smarter to see if the horrible team in front of him was to blame for his woes in net? Obviously the Flyers don't think like that, so they chose to invest millions of dollars into Martin Biron, who had been riding the pine in Buffalo for the past two seasons after losing the starting job to Ryan Miller.
So of course, after anointing Biron as the starting goalie, Niittymaki has regained his form from a few years back, while Biron shows why Buffalo was so willing to trade him away.
At this point, after more than 15 seasons of riding the goalie carousel, I feel like it's time to start fresh. It's officially time for the Flyers to choose a franchise goalie and stick with him through the typical ups and downs of a season and not overreact to a few bad games.
This means that when (not if) the Flyers make the playoffs, Niittymaki should be standing between the pipes.