People defending Miller's playoff performance aren't wrong. They're just missing the point.
— John (@johnjf125) April 26, 2014
Ryan Miller is, in 2014, a good enough goalie to win a Stanley Cup. Just as Marc-Andre Fleury was a good enough goalie to win a Stanley Cup in 2009, and Jimmy Howard was a good enough goalie to win a Stanley Cup in 2008, and so on and so forth. He just isn't good enough to win the Stanley Cup by himself.
Jaroslav Halak, Miller's predecessor as goalie for the St. Louis Blues, is in a similar camp, and their statistics for the Blues this season have been astonishingly similar. Both are perfectly capable goalies with occasional runs of transcendence and typical stretches of utter competence. I was a huge Halak fan, as he was a considerable upgrade over the previous decade or so of Blues goaltending, but even as such, I really have no interest in arguing whether or not Ryan Miller is a better goalie. He might be. Hell, he probably is.
But that isn't the point.
The point is that Ryan Miller was acquired in a definite win-now situation. And what happened, once he emerged from the hellish hockey situation of Buffalo, was something that should have been reasonably expected--playing behind a defense loaded with Olympic-caliber stars in St. Louis, Miller lowered his Goals Against Average but, in turn, suffered a dip in his save percentage. The problem with save percentage, viewed by some as the only hockey stat that matters, is that Ryan Miller's number was much higher when playing with a horrible defensive unit incapable of blocking basic shots. His save percentage was phenomenal in upstate New York and in St. Louis, it is merely serviceable.
It was absurd for anyone to believe Miller was still an elite-level goalie. It's like baseball teams acquiring a pitcher before the Trade Deadline--if he were truly a transcendent, once-in-a-generation talent, no team would be in a position where they would be willing to give him away. But as such, the Blues dealt not only a comparable goalie in Halak (who is five years younger, no less), but also received a notably worse forward in the exchange (Chris Stewart has the ability to score goals, something which seems to evade Steve Ott) and traded away a prospect and a first round draft pick.
I've used the analogy before and it's probably a flawed one, but this feels very early 2010s Phillies to me. This is a team that has a core of players which it really likes and is convinced that its window for competitiveness is right now--not that the window will close next year, but that they are closer to the end than the beginning of a run. Just as the Phillies gave huge extensions to Ryan Howard and Chase Utley and Cole Hamels and Jimmy Rollins that were arguably superfluous, the Blues have extended good players who may not be good by the time the contract runs its course. Additionally, just as the Phillies traded the entire top of its farm system in 2011 for a few months of Hunter Pence, the Blues traded future parts (granted, not as many) for a few months of Ryan Miller, whose contract is nearly up (whether he re-signs or not is mostly irrelevant--the Blues could have signed him in the off-season regardless).
I hope I'm wrong. I often am, particularly about hockey. But in the meantime, I think I'm done blaming Ryan Miller. He's fine. It's not really his fault. This series against the Blackhawks, freakishly similar to last year's against the Kings, isn't a reflection on one player, just as it wasn't last year. It's a reflection on the team as a whole. A team that, while above average in the NHL, has some work to do.
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