SIMMONS: How the Maple Leafs wound up with goalkeeper Anthony Stolarz
Anthony Stolarz had never been a starting goalie before this year. Mostly he had bounced around, from team to team, backup to backup spot.
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There is no Hall of Fame for awesome teammates but, if there were, there surely would be a place for former goaltender Curtis McElhinney.
He served as a backup for 13 NHL seasons with eight different teams. He averaged just 15 starts per year. He played and practised behind such luminaries as Sergei Bobrovsky in Columbus, Andrei Vasilevskiy in Tampa Bay and Miikka Kiprusoff in Calgary.
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SIMMONS: How the Maple Leafs wound up with goalkeeper Anthony Stolarz Back to video
He watched. He studied the craft. He took notes. He took more notes. He learned from the best, from being around the best.
And now he has this fancy title with the Maple Leafs: Director of Goaltending and Scouting. It’s one of those new-wave affirmations in hockey about addressing a position the sport has historically misunderstood or improperly scouted.
Last summer, before free agency hit, McElhinney was asked by his bosses to produce a list of goaltenders for the Leafs to approach come July 1.
The Leafs were not keeping last year’s starter, Ilya Samsonov. They had an opening. They wanted to find a goalie to play alongside the historically injured Joseph Woll. They liked Woll, liked his game, but wanted more depth in net.
At the very top of McElhinney’s list was a career backup with a history of injuries himself named Anthony Stolarz.
In this case last summer, it was one career backup advocating for another.
Nobody looks at Stolarz as a backup any longer. Through two games of the Battle of Ontario, he has been the difference, really, between the Maple Leafs winning and losing. He has been the better goalie in both games, outperforming the former Vezina Trophy winner, Linus Ullmark.
What’s a goalie’s job at any given time? Provide your team with a chance to win. You don’t always have to be great. But you have to be great when it matters most. The way Grant Fuhr was. The way Jonathan Quick was playoff great.
The way Stolarz has played through two games against Ottawa.
The way Ullmark hasn’t performed for the Senators.
The Leafs didn’t sign Stolarz to be their starting goalie. That wasn’t the plan. The plan was to have two goaltenders, Stolarz and Woll, competing for the net. Win and you’re in, many coaches will tell you. And then, at the end of the regular season, you make a decision on who starts in the playoffs. Or, in this case, the decision is made for you. Stolarz made it an easy call with his terrific play.
He grabbed the net and didn’t let go of it in the final weeks of the season. He has now won 10 games in a row for the Leafs, allowing just 15 goals against in that time with an all-world save percentage of .946.
The most recent loss for Stolarz, ironically, came against these Ottawa Senators back on March 15.
What has Stolarz done in the past 10 games and, really, in the past two seasons? He has been solid in the net. He has been uber-competitive and confident. He has been statistically sharp. He has been square to the puck, which surely shrinks the net when you’re 6-foot-6 and 243 pounds.
For those keeping track, that’s seven inches taller and 63 pounds heavier than the square-to-the-net Hall of Famer, Ed Belfour, who was in goal for Toronto the previous time there was a Battle of Ontario.
The best goalies are trusted by their teammates and coaches. The best goalies are believed in. They have a sense of timing that isn’t easily defined. McElhinney saw something in Stolarz that convinced him he could compete for a starting position in the NHL.
When he never had been close to being that before.
McElhinney could utilize Bobrovsky as a character witness. Bob played ahead of Stolarz last year on the Stanley Cup champions in Florida.
McElhinney knows Bob well: They played together for four years in Columbus. Nobody works on his game the way Bob does. Stolarz had remarkable regular-season numbers in Florida last season. He never had done anything like that before.
Was it a one-year wonder or was this the beginning of something new?
For much of past decade Stolarz, has bounced from team to team and wasn’t just a backup. Some years, he was the backup to the backup. The third goalie on teams that played only a game or two.
Philadelphia needed a goalie after drafting him and they let Stolarz go. Edmonton needed a goalie after trading for him and they let him go. Anaheim couldn’t play him ahead of John Gibson or the now-retired Ryan Miller, so he got punished and sent to San Diego.
From the Ducks he went to the Panthers, won a Stanley Cup, established himself in a way he never had before.
The Leafs paid just $2.5 million a year for Stolarz, which is about half the going rate for starting goalies in the NHL. The average salary of a playoff goaltender this year is at that $5-million mark. The highest-paid playoff goalie is Bobrovsky at $10 million, the lowest-paid is Washington’s Logan Thompson, who will get a raise from $766,000 to $5.8 million next season.
However you calculate the numbers, Stolarz has been a bargain for the Leafs — both contractually and statistically. He has been a difference-maker.
The lifelong backup, McElhinney, everyone’s favourite teammate, got this one right.
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