by Adam GretzFiled under: Blue Jackets
Two years ago, Steve Mason was one of the best young goalies in the NHL, helping to lead an upstart Columbus Blue Jackets team to their first playoff appearance in the history of the franchise. He ended up winning the Calder Trophy as the league's rookie of the year and was a finalist for the Vezina Trophy, given to the league's best goaltender (the award ultimately went to Boston's Tim Thomas).Heading into the 2010-11 season, he's more of a question mark than anything else. For whatever reason, the success just wasn't there for him last season, as he, and the Blue Jackets, stumbled to a last place finish in the Central Division with 79 points, which was also tied for the fourth-worst mark in the NHL.
Mason's save percentage of .901 was 37th out of 44 qualified goaltenders, while his goals against average of 3.08 was 38th. Of course, it wasn't all his doing. The current trend in the NHL is to load up on defense to help negate some of the chances a goaltender has to face; that mindset, of course, is a two-way street, and if a team has a weaker defense that's giving up a lot of shots ... well, that's certainly not going to help the man in the crease.
Working against him last season was the fact Columbus allowed more shots per game, and didn't appear to be anywhere near as sound defensively as it was during its playoff season the previous year. During that rookie campaign, there was some talk/concern as to how much of his success was due to his own ability, or the fact that he was playing in a Ken Hitchcock system that limited the number of quality chances he had to stop.
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