Joseph Woll is day to day, week to week, and who knows, maybe this is how it will be for the rest of his entire playing career.
You really have to wonder. You really have to doubt what the Maple Leafs have in their supposed No. 1 goalie.
A starting goalie has to be ready. A starting goalie has to be prepared. A starting goalie has to be trusted and believed in.
And what are we supposed to think — and more importantly, what are the Maple Leafs themselves supposed to think — when Woll was scheduled to start in the season-opening game Wednesday night in Montreal and pulled himself before being placed on the injured list on the first day of the new season?
If this was something, something that had never happened before, it would be rather easy to give Woll the benefit of the doubt. But this is five professional seasons of missing more games than he played. The last game he was supposed to start — Game 7 in Boston, a big one, a huge one against the Bruins — he mysteriously pulled himself on the day of the game.
And on Tuesday after practice, he was talking excitedly about making his first start at the famed Bell Centre. That was in the afternoon. By the following morning, he was on the injured list and the season-opening start went to expected backup Anthony Stolarz, the giant the Leafs signed from the Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers.
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The Game 7 flip-flop against the Bruins was shrouded in mystery. The lower-body injury that prevented Woll from dressing and starting in Montreal wasn’t exactly expected. Head coach Craig Berube had an early season plan for his netminders.
Every coach maps that out. Woll was going to start in Montreal. Stolarz was going to start on Thursday night in his native New Jersey. Woll would start the home opener against Pittsburgh on Saturday night.
Now this is a terrific early season opportunity for Stolarz, who was rather sharp in the Montreal opener, and now for the first real time in his decade-long career he has a chance to earn the trust of his coaching staff and a chance to possibly steal the No. 1 position in the Leafs net, which no one really saw coming.
On the day before the opener, Berube was asked about Woll’s history of injury, about the problem he has had in the past and he played the “I’m the first-year coach” card. He wasn’t about to judge Woll from the start of this season, counting training camp. He was going to learn about him on his own.
General manager Brad Treliving has been asked about his goalie many times since last season ended. Is Woll injury prone? Is he the kind of goalie who can’t play when he’s a little banged up? How can he be trusted to be the Leafs’ No. 1 goalie when he’s only averaged 24 games a season in his first five professional years?
Treliving happens to be a big Woll fan. He thinks he should be a terrific goaltender. He thinks he can be a factor in the NHL. He thinks that Woll trains so hard, works so hard, is so professional about his approach to playing that he can’t help but succeed. He says all of that knowing all of the history that says otherwise.
But the evidence is overwhelmingly against Woll just one game into the season, one missed start into the new season. If this is happening now, this is happening already, what’s next?
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There is a relationship that needs to exist between goaltenders and the teams they play on for everyone to succeed. The goalies have to be trusted by their teammates. They have to be dependable and available. That’s just how the players view things.
They also have to be trusted by their coaches and just as importantly, trusted by management. If the players lose faith in the goalie, if the coaching staff loses faith, if management doesn’t trust the goalie, what you are left with are the Ottawa Senators of the past several seasons.
After Matt Murray signed long term in Ottawa, long after he won his Stanley Cups in Pittsburgh, the trust broke down between the goalie and the team. His exit was explained this way: The players didn’t believe in Murray. The coaches didn’t believe in him. Neither did management.
In the end, they paid for him to go away.
The key breakdown, of course, was trust: They didn’t know when Murray would be able to play, be ready to play, be well enough to play.
The Leafs now have Murray playing for the Marlies and he is a relatively decent insurance policy of sorts if they need him. And they have another giant, Dennis Hildeby, to probably play in New Jersey as they wait to see what happens next with Woll.
This is not how any team wants to start a new season, with these kind of questions in goal. With a undetermined matter this large and significant. Especially when the schedule provides you with three games against non-playoff teams to start.
Maybe Woll will get healthy and will return and will be fine in the Leafs net. Maybe.
Very early in his NHL career, maybe seems to be Woll’s new middle name.
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