Photo Credit: Candice Ward/USA TODAY Sports
Vancouver Canucks goaltender Ryan Miller was left in the net for all five goals.
As the club coughed up an early three-goal lead in an elimination game, it was apparent that Miller wasn’t able to make lateral movements with his usual speed and effectiveness. Credit the Calgary Flames, who pulled Jonas Hiller aggressively in that crucial Game 6, because they attacked Miller backdoor repeatedly and with great success.
After returning right before the postseason from a significant knee injury sustained in late-February, Miller was consistent in his conversations with reporters. He reiterated time and time again that he wasn’t all that close to a fully recovery.
On Thursday we found out that he actually won’t be back to 100 percent until July, his agent Mike Liut told News 1130 Sports on Thursday.
Mostly the news here is good news for the Canucks’ starting goaltender, actually.
“Structurally he’s 100 percent,” Liut said, “and (he) will be 100 percent for training camp.”
You’d rather Miller be 100 emoji than 100 percent for training camp, but the Canucks will surely take it. In the meantime Miller appears to be getting back at it already, and his recovery is mostly on to minor issues.
Agent Mike Liut on Ryan Miller knee injury update : ” He’s doing well, training and scar tissue the only problem, nothing major.” #Canucks
— News1130 Sports (@News1130Sports) May 28, 2015
Where all of this becomes a bit tougher to swallow is when Liut touches on the timeline for a complete recovery.
“Ryan will be 100% by the end of July, it was a five-six month injury in my eyes,” Liut told News 1130Sports.
You may recall that there was some hearty debate about the timeline of Miller’s recovery, particularly as a result of Farhan Lalji’s report that Miller wouldn’t be the club’s starter for their first playoff game as a result of the injury. The report turned out to be correct, but there was a good deal of hair splitting in the aftermath.
For what it’s worth, Liut – a former NHL goaltender himself, who may also be familiar to our readers as former Canucks goalie Cory Schneider’s agent – was always conservative about Miller’s prognosis and his comments here are consistent with those he made in mid-March.
Though Miller was far away from getting back to full speed (by his own admission), when push came to shove in the playoffs, the Canucks opted to use him – a goaltender who was eight weeks into a recovery timeline that, in Miller’s agents eyes, was likely to take five-to-six months – over Eddie Lack when Lack struggled in Games 3 and 4 in Calgary.
Even as Miller’s lateral movements and rebound control looked off, the team stuck with him for the entirety of Game 6. It arguably cost them, or was part of what cost them, in a winnable game to end their season.
The Canucks obviously have an established pecking order in net, which is fair enough, though they also had a healthier option available in a crucial game. That Lack was both healthier and had outperformed Miller all season makes the team’s decision to stick with Miller throughout Game 6, even as things began to go sideways, a particularly difficult one to understand.
It’s too late to dwell on what could’ve been, and it’s cheap to use hindsight when evaluating difficult real-time decisions made by NHL head coaches. That said, it’s hard not to react to Liut’s recent comments with a shake of the head.
