Re: Maine Black Bears 2010-2011 - Part Deux
After seeing Sirman the other night, I'm confused as to why he isn't in there at least every other game.
Have only seen Sirman once and Sully 3 times (1@BU and 2 @ BC), and I'm not sold on Sully... he fills a lot of net, but is not real quick on his feet.
Sirman looked pretty darn good to me, especially on the penalty shot. Good skater, good glove, quick on his feet. Maybe he just had the game of his life on Sunday?
No, you're pretty on. Let me give you the background:
The knock on Sirman this year was his freshman year performance. He came in last year to back up 'Oh-My-Daaaaarling-You're-A-Lush', and he was nicely regarded. He had propelled his team to an unexpected playoff push in juniors the year before, and INCH ranked him #2 among incoming sieves.
Unfortunately, aside from 1 win against UMass, and a great exhibition performance against U-18 (only goalie to shut them out last year), his play was pretty horrid. Let's put it this way...remember when Darling was suspended during the end of the year? Remember who we had in net instead?? Yea.....that's all you need to know.
He admitted in an interview at the end of the year: "I was not in game-shape for this level of play". His innate skills were there, but his physical condition and mental readiness was not.
He commtted himself last offseason to changing that and stepping up. He did. I think they said he lost, what? 15 or 20 pounds?? And he really just drilled himself training and practicing. Now, I'm not going to call him Jimmy Howard, but I definitely saw an improved player when he stepped out there this year... I quickly saw glimpses of the player people thought he could turn into.
Despite picking up Martin Ouellette, true freshman taken by Columbus in the last draft, Shawn obviously was showing good things and Tim announced him as: our opening day #1 in what will be a 3 horse race and rotation.
As I pointed out: his 1st 3 regular season games all had some kind of added pressure. Our home opener (shake the rust, prove yourself as the new #1), game 1 with North Dakota (pressure cooker), and @ Michigan State for their home opener (same deal).
He stopped 77 of the first 86 shots he faced as the new #1. Of those 9 goals against: 4 were power play goals (help him out a bit PK), 1 was a shorthanded breakaway (wake up power play), and 1 was an extremely flukey goal off the side of his skate against NoDak after the game was long decided. Those were 6 of the 9. My point is: despite playing some good competition, early in the season, in a new role...he played well but at anything, his stats probably DIDNT do him any real justice.
After that....Tim just stopped playing him. Period. We weren't given any rhyme or reason. Everyone just started man-crushing Sullivan and that was the end of that. Don't get me wrong: I like Dan's calm demeanor and I have confidence in his development, but I've really never seen a coach handle his goalies as poorly as Tim has.
