What Would You Do Wednesday: Eddie Lack
By Rhys Jessop
9 years agoWelcome to a new feature here on Canucks Army and all sites on the Nation Network: What Would You Do Wednesday, where we put you, yes YOU, in charge of your own imaginary Vancouver Canucks. We’ll present you with a different scenario each week, and you tell us how you’d solve it in the comments section below. Give props to the answers you do like and trash the ones you don’t. Easy! So let’s get started:
First off, the top answers to last week’s WWYDW, on the topic of re-doing the Cody Hodgson deal. Here’s NM00 playing the ever-popular “lament the Canucks draft record” game that we love here at Canucks Army:
If we’re playing the hindsight game, I would prefer the Canucks to have selected any of Myers, Karlsson, Gardiner, Del Zotto, Eberle, Ennis or Carlson amongst 1st rounders over Hodgson and proceed NOT to alienate the selected player from the organization.
Of course, based on the draft record, the previous GM clearly did not have the crystal ball he so desperately wanted…
And here’s Frank, who likes how Kassian is developing outside of the limelight of the top-6:
I’m fine with getting Kassian for Cody. I’m hoping that Willie D will be able to get Kassian to play a smart, disciplined hard hitting game because I think he has the talent to take games over. But he can still make poor decisions at times and will cough up pucks when he could have a made a safe play.
Nevertheless, Kassian has the kind of size and fearlessness that we need in our division and maybe paired with a Horvat and Jensen as his linemates, we can feature a line that has overall good size, skating and scoring abilities.
Today’s order of business is just what to do with Eddie Lack.
Eddie Lack was very, very strong last season as Roberto Luongo’s backup, but faltered mightily after he was anointed the Canucks’ starter after Luongo was dealt. While some of this was regression, some of this poor latter-half performance was undoubtedly John Tortorella running Lack into the ground by playing him night after night after night.
Lack also looked primed to challenge Ryan Miller for starts in preseason, but he hasn’t been able to translate any of that success to the regular season either. He’s 2nd last in the entire NHL with a god-awful 0.875 save percentage, which is also the rate he’s stopping shots at even strength.
Miller, to his credit, has been solid. His 0.917 save percentage is tied for 23rd among NHL regulars, and right around his usual career average. Although his even strength rate leaves a little to be desired, Miller has yet to really cost the Canucks any games, and has held up his end of the bargain, which is all you can reasonably ask of a 34-year old goalie.
But Miller is on track to play in the neighborhood of 65 games, and that’s just too many for any goalie, let alone a guy his age. Eddie Lack will have to pick up more starts, but the question becomes “when?”
So your question this week is as follows: what do you do with Eddie Lack and the Canucks’ goalie situation? Do you bite the bullet and start a struggling Lack in a game coming up that’s not a back-to-back? Or do you keep running out Lack only on back-to-backs in hopes of preserving Miller for the playoffs? Which games coming up should Lack start? How many starts should he get this season? Would you look at trading him and calling up Jacob Markstrom before Lack’s stock drops too low? Tell us in the comments!
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