Dave Tippet makes a huge change to his lineup for Game 2.

A neccessary change.

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 3 years ago
Dave Tippet makes a huge change to his lineup for Game 2.
Ian Kucerak/Postmedia

The Edmonton Oilers have announced a major change to their lineup for Game 2 of their series against the Chicago Blackhawks, and frankly it will come as very little surprise to anyone who watched Game 1.

The Edmonton Oilers will be going with goaltender Mikko Koskinen in net this evening after a catastrophic start for veteran netminder Mike Smith in Game 1 of the series. Koskinen was forced to come in relief of Smith in Game 1 but despite coming in cold off of the bench he was very solid for the remainder of the game. In fact you could easily argue that Koskinen was outstanding in the second half of the game, stopping 18 of 19 shots he faced for a .947 save percentage and a 1.95 goals against average, providing a stark contrast to the poor performance that Smith had in the game.


In Game 1 Tippett had surprised many by going with Smith given that Koskinen had been the better goaltender during the regular season, however that is now a move that looks like a mistake on the part of the Oilers bench boss. Smith had the worst performance of any goaltender we have seen in the playoffs so far, the Blackhawks torched Smith for a whopping 5 goals in the first two periods of play resulting in Smith finishing the game with a comical 11.31 goals against average and an abysmal .783 save percentage.Those are horrific numbers in the playoffs and should almost certainly result in your goalie being sat in the following game of the series, which thankfully has been the case here. 

There was some doubt yesterday about whether or not Tippett would in fact make this change, as Tippett had made comments following the game that suggested he did not believe Smith had been an issue. It has to be said that the Oilers at 5 on 5 in front of Smith were largely dominated by the Blackhawks, so there was no doubt some truth to what Tippett was saying at the time, however I suspect that his comments may have been more an effort at gamesmanship, or perhaps an effort to preserve Smith's confidence, given the change that was made today.


Source: