Last night, against a Tampa Bay Lightning team with some of the elite offensive players in the NHL, Arvid Söderblom stood on his head for 60 minutes and earned the Blackhawks a desperately needed win. He finished the night stopping 34 of 35 shots.
Arvid Soderblom: “I feel confident, I feel calm, and that’s when you play your best — when you just go out there having fun and not really thinking too much.”He said this was his favorite of his 34 saves: pic.twitter.com/tbzZ7bjKYq
With last night’s game in the books, Söderblom now has a .910 save percentage in 22 appearances this season. To put that number in some perspective, Igor Shesterkin has a .909 save percentage this season.
Söderblom has now appeared in six games in the month of January. He has made at least 30 saves in five of those six appearances and has a .915 save percentage this month (and that includes allowing six goals to the Rangers on Jan. 5).
According to MoneyPuck, Söderblom’s save percentage above expected (0.005) is the same as Dallas’ Jake Oettinger and better than Tampa’s Andrei Vasilevskiy, the Islanders’ Ilya Sorokin, Florida’s Sergei Bobrovsky and Nashville’s Juuse Saros, just to name a few.
MoneyPuck ranks Söderblom 25th out 90 goaltenders in the NHL in goals saved above expected (6.6).
Now let’s take a step back and remember where Söderblom started this season. The Blackhawks went out and signed Laurent Brossoit to split duties in the NHL and named Drew Commesso the starter in Rockford at the beginning of training camp. Söderblom, in the final year of his contract, appeared to be an odd-man out after a really tough first full season in the NHL.
Frequently last year, then-head coach Luke Richardson and his teammates would talk after losses about Söderblom deserving a better outcome. While the fans who watched the game rarely gave him that credit, his teammates and many in the organization did see the effort. And, again, there’s a learning curve in the NHL for goaltenders and he did not have a lot of ice time in North America before last season.
His turnaround this season has been truly remarkable.
Sergei Belski-Imagn ImagesMeanwhile…
The Blackhawks took Petr Mrázek in a salary dump trade from Toronto and he struggled with injuries his first year in Chicago before getting his body right and having a really strong season last year. That got him a two-year extension with the Blackhawks. He was really good with a heavy workload behind a bad defensive team last year.
This season, Mrázek has been okay for the Blackhawks. At times, he’s left a little to be desired.
MoneyPuck really doesn’t like Mrázek. They rank him 87th out of 90 goalies in the NHL in goals saved above expected this season (-9.7). He ranks 66th in the league in save percentage above expected (-0.006).
I want to be clear: I’m not throwing Mrázek under the bus right now. Like his partner in the crease for the Blackhawks, Mrázek has appeared in six games in January. He was phenomenal in three of those six — especially when he stopped 35 of 36 against Colorado on Jan. 8. He is still a good goaltender and is still incredibly useful for the Blackhawks.
But the discussion we need to have at this point in this season and moving forward is how we view the depth chart for the Chicago Blackhawks.
Who’s No. 1?
When asked about whether or not the organization expects Brossoit to participate at any point this season during his mid-season media availability on Monday, Blackhawks general manager Kyle Davidson would only say “if” he comes back.
At this point, one has to think a buyout of Brossoit is possible this summer. He hasn’t appeared in a game this season because of an injury he suffered while training for the start of camp. That opened the door — the consternation of many Blackhawks fans — for Söderblom to stay in the NHL for a bit to open the season and he has truly grabbed the role to the point that he shouldn’t be asked to give it back.
I don’t think acknowledging that Söderblom is the better goalie in Chicago and fully elevating him to the No. 1 spot on the depth chart is in any way a negative for his counterpart.
Mrázek will turn 33 on Valentine’s Day. He continues to do a solid job for the organi-I-zation. When the Blackhawks signed Brossoit in July, the largely-held belief was that the two-year terms for the two veterans was buying time for Commesso to mature in Rockford. It now appears Mrázek has helped mentor Söderblom into a bona fide NHL goaltender.
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