First star
David Rittich
We love starting goaltender David Rittich! While Rittich only played in one game last week, he still earns the first star of the week. He recorded his very first career shutout in their 1-0 win against the LA Kings as he stopped all 21 shots he faced.
21 shots isn’t that high or anything, but many of those shots were quality chances by the Kings and goaltenders often say it’s harder when they face fewer shots.
With that win, Rittich improved to 5-1-0 on the season and has half of the Calgary Flames wins in just six games to improve to a 0.935 sv%. He’s also been great on the road (like he was last season as well) posting a 0.959 sv%.
On top of all these, of goaltenders who have played a minimum of 100 minutes at 5v5 he’s sixth in the league in sv% at 0.950. He also has a quality-start percentage of 0.833 and has only let in four high-danger shots against of the 53 he has faced (5v5). To put that into perspective, Mike Smith has allowed 18 high-danger shots against on 90 shots.
Rittich definitely deserves more starts, which is something we found ourselves saying last season after a few months as well. However, Smith did play a good game against the Sharks on Sunday evening and he will probably get the start against the Montreal Canadiens. However, it seems like the Flames don’t necessarily hold Smith accountable a whole lot and continue to give him undeserved starts over Rittich.
Anyways, this was not supposed to be a bashing-Mike-Smith post. We’ve done too many of those.
For all these reasons stated, David Rittich earns our first start of the week! Also because he and Matthew Tkachuk look like they give the best hugs.