In his two seasons as an NHL goalie, okay, in parts of one season last year, and in seven appearances this season, Montreal Canadiens goaltender Jakub Dobes has been as solid as you can ask a 24-year-old goalie to be.
As a rookie, Dobes posted a 7-4-3 record with a 2.74 goals-against average and a .909 save percentage in 16 games last season. It was a very encouraging start for Dobes, who is under contract at the terrific bargain price of $965,000 for this season and next year.
However, like every netminder, Dobes has his tough stretches, but early this season, he’s thriving, putting up a 6-0-1 record, a 2.25 GAA and a .920 SP. But in his past couple of games, Dobes’ individual numbers have taken a hit, and on Thursday, he wasn’t at his best in a Canadiens loss against the New Jersey Devils.
Nobody is more sour about his performance of late than Dobes himself.
“Just not good enough from my side,” Dobes said after losing to the Devils. “I don’t know, just really hard. This is a tough one. Just sucks…It happened last year, it happened this year. Just disappointed in myself.”
Even though Dobes was clearly emotional after the loss, this is what you should want to see from your starting goalie. Truly elite goalies can’t be satisfied with their performance, and that goes whether they’re firing on all cylinders or looking like they couldn’t stop a beach ball.
To his credit, the emotional Dobes is sounding like he knows he’s under pressure to produce. So nobody should expect him to be satisfied, no matter the outcome. If he’s going to make it in the white-hot glare of the Montreal market, Dobes is going to have to navigate his way through bad bounces, bad play in front of him and bad play of his own. This current stretch of adversity is one of the first such stretches in his NHL days, and there’s a good likelihood this stretch will soon conclude with several strong performances from him.
Because really, despite that last loss, Dobes has shown plenty of promise. This loss to the Devils was his first loss of the season. But given that his SP has fallen to .857 in each of his past two games, you can understand where Dobes is coming from with his emotional media session. He’s had things go his way for the majority of his opportunities, and he’s aspiring to come through in a bigger role, in the starter’s role. Thus, Dobes has to be consistently good to get even close to being satisfied.
If Dobes came out coldly and essentially shrugged his shoulders after a loss, you’d be wary about his buy-in as a team player who badly wanted to win. After that Devils loss, you certainly can’t accuse Dobes of not caring.
Regardless, there’s no sense that Dobes has lost his place as the odds-on favorite to be Montreal’s starter between the pipes for the long term. He currently has to show he can put this stretch of play behind him, while still using it to motivate himself to be consistently better.
Dobes may have shown more emotions than many NHL goalies do, but don’t think for a second that behind the scenes, there aren’t all sorts of emotions going on. The opposite is true. And the trick now for Dobes is to channel that emotion into winning games far more often than not.
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