1<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div><\/div>\nSo, which goalie\u2019s game do you trust more entering what is now a best-of-three series?<\/p>\n
Looking at Dost\u00e1l<\/h2>\n
If you didn\u2019t account for his uneven season and subpar advanced metrics, it would be easy to see Dost\u00e1l with a decisive edge. He often has had to prop up a porous defense to make the Ducks more competitive as he progressed into a No. 1 netminder.<\/p>\n
Czechia took note of his ascent and essentially made him its lead goalie in international play. Dost\u00e1l\u2019s strong performance in the gold-medal victory at last year\u2019s World Championships basically put him ahead of countrymen Karel Vejmelka and Dan Vladar when it came to who had the net for crucial games in the Olympics.<\/p>\n
Dost\u00e1l won 30 games for the first time, but his GSAx of -2.9 was well off the 14.3 of the previous season, which helped convince Anaheim to invest in his pricey five-year contract extension. He\u2019s had a propensity to allow first-period goals this season. On numerous occasions, he has been beaten on the first shot. That has continued into these playoffs.<\/p>\n
Listed at 6-foot-2, Dost\u00e1l is a smaller goalie, and while he is terrific at tracking plays and \u2014 as he showed in staring down Edmonton\u2019s Connor McDavid in the first round \u2014 exhibits great patience in a one-on-one setting, he can get beat on tips and redirections since he doesn\u2019t fill as much net. However, Dost\u00e1l has had trouble corralling shots he normally secures and is leaving too many pucks in his crease for opponents to jump on.<\/p>\n
Does that make him a question mark when it comes to his ability to get the job done and send the Ducks into the Western Conference final? Not in the eyes of his teammates.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s showed this year, or in his career, that he\u2019s a guy that can turn the page very quickly,\u201d said Ducks captain Radko Gudas, who won with Dost\u00e1l at the 2025 men\u2019s worlds. \u201cHe\u2019s been there for us the whole year. He\u2019s been for us in the national team in big games and he thrives in these games that are a little more pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n
After he was pulled in Game 5 against the Oilers, when he allowed three goals on nine shots, Dost\u00e1l bounced back with a 25-save effort that was his best game of the series. On Sunday, he only needed 18 saves but a few were particularly timely to fight off a late push by Vegas. Tomas Hertl\u2019s last-minute goal skewed his numbers on an otherwise effective night.<\/p>\n
It isn\u2019t eye-popping stats that keep the Ducks believing in Dost\u00e1l. It is his steady demeanor and ability to handle pressure situations. Anaheim wouldn\u2019t have had 26 comeback victories this season if he didn\u2019t deliver timely saves to keep his team close.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know if there\u2019s a telltale sign, but I know that he\u2019s a competitor,\u201d coach Joel Quenneville said. \u201cYou can\u2019t stop the last shot, you got to move forward, however it is. You got to be in the now presence of focusing and getting yourself comfortable for the next situation. Goalies, they\u2019re different and in a different way, he seems like he\u2019s more normal than a goalie.\u201d<\/p>\n
Quenneville then jokingly said, \u201cI don\u2019t know if that\u2019s good or bad.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Dost\u00e1l, the Ducks have someone who is calm and collected in the crease. He doesn\u2019t express frustration when there are breakdowns in front of him. Emotion only appears when he lets in a stoppable shot. His teammates rally around him.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are a very tight group,\u201d Dost\u00e1l said Monday. \u201cWe know what we are capable of, like all of us, whenever we get on the ice. Obviously, when you get pulled like (in Game 5), it just happens. But the guys were very (supportive). There\u2019s no doubt that they know what I can do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Looking at Hart<\/h2>\n
As mentioned above, Sunday wasn\u2019t Hart\u2019s best effort. Mikael Granlund\u2019s goal was an unfortunate hop, and the third goal, which was scored by Ian Moore, was a wobbling slap shot through hordes of traffic. It\u2019s hard to fault Hart much on either. The two power-play goals, though, he\u2019d like to have back.<\/p>\n
On the game\u2019s opening goal by Beckett Sennecke, Hart was just a half-beat behind the play. That\u2019s a rarity for him in this series. Hart\u2019s reads and positioning have been sharp and ahead of the play for the most part, but he was late pushing out when Alex Killorn passed it to the point, which led to Sennecke\u2019s blast from distance slipping underneath his pads before he could butterfly.<\/p>\n
Killorn\u2019s goal late in the second period was a tougher play for Hart. He defaulted to his knees early to seal the ice, which left him flat along the goal line and not square to Killorn\u2019s drive, then the puck just snuck underneath his blocker-side arm. Neither was an egregious error, but it\u2019s fair to expect him to save those shots.<\/p>\n
Hart has bounced back from those types of games really well this postseason. Vegas coach John Tortorella, who also coached Hart for two seasons in Philadelphia, is confident he will again.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s been terrific,\u201d he said bluntly on Monday. \u201cI don\u2019t expect anything different tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n
After a similar game against Utah in the first round, in which Hart let in a few shots from long range, Tortorella said, \u201cI know Carter well enough. He wants to work through it. I have full faith in him. \u2026 I just think he\u2019s built that way. I think he cares. I just know him so well. He has an attitude and a mental toughness about him. At that position, he\u2019ll be fine.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was right. Hart followed up that game against Utah by backstopping Vegas to four straight wins, including overtime thrillers in Games 5 and 6, when he came up with a series of clutch saves at the biggest moments.<\/p>\n
In a season in which the Golden Knights have struggled to find solid goaltending, Hart has delivered that on more nights than not in these playoffs. He was once considered a franchise goalie, after two excellent seasons to begin his NHL career in Philadelphia, and has already shown flashes of that promise in his short time in Vegas.<\/p>\n
He has the athleticism and quickness to keep up with a team that skates and passes the puck as well as the Ducks. If Mark Stone remains out with an injury, and if Anaheim plays as well as it did over the first two games at T-Mobile Arena, Hart may need to reach a gear we\u2019ve yet to see from him in order to push Vegas over the top.<\/p>\n
Tortorella is confident he can.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not complicated,\u201d Tortorella said Monday. \u201cIt\u2019s big plays at big times, and guys stepping up at certain times. Stakes are high now, when you start getting to the short strokes of the series.\u201d\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAS VEGAS \u2014 Goaltending will undoubtedly play a factor over the final games of the second-round series between the Vegas Golden Knights and Anaheim Ducks, which is tied 2-2 going into Game 5 on Tuesday. It already has been a factor. Carter Hart was Vegas\u2019 best player over the first two games of the series, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30894,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Which-goalie-might-be-a-difference-maker-Anaheims-Lukas-Dostal-or.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30893"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30895,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30893\/revisions\/30895"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}