I'd Throw Some Money Down On Calvin Pickard To Win The Vezina Trophy Now With Gritty Painted On His Mask
When the Philadelphia Flyers claimed Calvin Pickard off waivers, I was a little hesitant. I know the team is currently dealing with some injuries at the goaltending position and just needed to get some more healthy guys in the rotation. But to me it said a couple of things. 1) That Hextall isn’t confident in Alex Stolarz being the backup the Brian Elliott. And 2) that the team is going to continue being extremely cautious and patient with when they decide to bring Carter Hart up for some regular season NHL action. Neither of those two things are necessarily anything to get excited about and Calvin Pickard for the most part is very similar to Flyers goalies in the past. That being in the sense that he has some consistency issues and probably borders on “average”, which both have been the story for Flyers goalies for the past 20 years.
But now? Well now I’m not so sure anymore. Because now I’m starting to think this Calvin Pickard guy may have some gas left in the tank. He’s only 26-years-old and has really only had the chance to play for shitty ass Colorado so far in his NHL career. So now he gets to play behind guys like Shayne Gostisbehere and Ivan Provorov. And to really solidify the bounceback year for Calvin Pickard, he now has Gritty painted on his new mask. This isn’t just going to be a bounceback year for Pickard, this has Vezina candidate written all over it. And you’d be foolish to think it couldn’t actually happen. Nobody knows what to expect with goalies. They are freaks. Each and every last one of them. The position is so mental and all it takes is one flip of the switch to go from Goldberg pre-Bombay showing up to Julie The Cat at the Junior Goodwill Games. Gritty can be that switch flip.
All I’m saying is that if the Flyers announced later today that they decided to sign Calvin Pickard for 8-years at $8M, I’d be okay with it. Because with a mask like that, you have found your franchise goalie.
P.S. – Speaking of Gritty, have I ever told you guys about the time I reviewed the Gritty sandwich from Urban Saloon?