Tuesday, March 10, 2009

In Defense of Manny Fernandez

I'll be the first to admit, Manny had a shitty game sunday. He directed in most of the goals against him one way or another, and managed to lose against the Rangers despite 3 very nice goals.


So all of boston wants his head, or for him to retire, or some other tired bullshit. Here's the deal with Manny:

He's a very good goalie. He's coming back from injury. He's only losing games by one goal.

Taking a look at the last 5 games Manny played, we've got:
  • PHI@BOS: 3-4 overtime loss. The winning goal was a deflection off Andrew Ference's skate.
  • BOS@NAS: 2-3 shootout loss. Wheeler was the only bruin to score in the 4-round shootout.
  • BOS@TBL: 3-4 regulation loss. Kari Ramo made 40 saves, Manny made 14.
  • PHI@BOS: 2-4 regulation loss. Terrible game for the Bruins as a whole. Manny
  • BOS@NYR: 4-3 regulation loss. Terrible game for Manny.
And even with all of those, Manny is still a good goalie and needs to play his way back to early-season form:
  • He's 11th in Points/game of goalies that have more than 5 games played right now.
  • He's 9th in GAA with 2.39
  • He's 15th in save percentage with .915
  • He beats or ties "King" Henrik Lundqvist in all of these categories.
So lay off the man while he's getting his game back. The Bruins need to play him to give Thomas some rest, for sure. He'll catch a break, though not if he plays like shit again like he did on Sunday.
GO BRUINS!

4 Comments:

The Caveman said...

Who are you calling reactionary and juvenile?! ME?!

OK. You're right. Fine.

Is Manny as bad as he was against the Rangers? No. Is he as good as he played in the first half? Probably not. Look, I think he'll play better - but you hate to see teams and players back into the play-offs.

Here's hoping he turns it around and gets some bounces. The B's need him in order to make the run that we all want to make.

Tom said...

I hated Manny's game Sunday, but at this point I think he just needs to play. He needs a solid 3-1 or 4-1 win over some crap team to get the confidence back.

The bottom line is that he's still Plan B. It goes without saying that TT will be starting every game in the playoffs, so whether Manny is on top of his game only matters if there's an injury or TT flames out. In that respect, the B's have much bigger fish to fry...

Unknown said...

When can we expect to see Cornelius' "Leave Manny Alone!" YouTube video?

Unknown said...

This is as close as it gets, Evan.

You'd have to pay me a lot to get me into that much mascara.

Still, he's a good goalie but people are all "blah blah blah manny sucks" because he's not Tim Thomas, folk hero. Does it really have to be one or the other?