Tenth Player Trending Down
10. Mikko Koskinen
At first glance, it would appear Mikko Koskinen doesn’t belong in this category.
Peter Chiarelli brought him in at a crazy price of $2.5 million, which is gutsy for a guy who at the time had barely played any games in the NHL and had only proven results in the KHL.
He’s shared the workload equally with Cam Talbot this season and has a 2.52 GAA and a .919 Sv%. Both are pretty solid numbers and prove this was one of Peter Chiarelli’s better acquisitions and has proved wrong everyone who thought this was a bad idea (myself included).
The problem comes into play when you look into his game logs, found here.
He won 8 of his first ten starts, but then only had four wins in his remaining starts, including 5 of his last 6 and tonight against LA was probably his worst start as he gave up three goals on eight shots, including four straight losses in the last two weeks of December.
Now granted, with the injuries to the blueline we’re missing our key puck mover and one of our key stay at home guys, so naturally, he’s going to see more shots and thus more goals.
But at the beginning of the season, there were games when he didn’t get much support from the rest of the team, and he managed to steal a few of those wins for us.
Now more than ever we need that Koskinen that steals a win or 2 for us as we can’t afford a huge slide in the standings. Cam Talbot hasn’t gotten back to what he was yet, and we need at least one goalie on his game if we have any hope of making the playoffs this year.
If he can settle down and become the steady presence between the pipes that he was at the beginning of the season, then that could be the missing ingredient we need to overcome the lack of depth scoring and the injuries on the blueline.
Of all the guys on the list that are trending down, Koskinen is the guy that I could easily see start trending up again. But he needs to be the guy he was at the beginning of the season rather than the guy of the last few months.
Also, if he is re-signed again – and at this point, unless he completely implodes I could see him being re-signed – after he’s had a full season in the NHL, I could see him settling down next season.
But the fact remains he’s been inconsistent so far. Here’s to better things down the stretch for Koskinen.