Joseph Woll's Finding Out That a Goalie Can Only Do So Much

Joseph Woll's situation in Philadelphia feels familiar to last season with the Toronto Maple Leafs. Last season’s Maple Leafs were less than good, and that put the team’s goalies at a huge disadvantage. Obviously, goalies are paid to stop pucks. That said, how the defence plays in front of them matters to their statistics, including wins and losses.

So in the off-season, he got traded to a new team. For Maple Leafs fans like myself, you have to hope one of your favourite players lands well and gets a chance to turn things around. Alas, the Flyers (if that’s possible) are a bit worse than the Maple Leafs were last season. Now the losses are piling up. Before long, we're looking at the numbers and wondering what's going wrong.

Woll is doing his job, but that doesn’t guarantee a Flyers win.

Woll stopped 26 of 30 shots in Sunday's 4-1 loss to Carolina. That's not the kind of performance that will make anybody forget the result, but I think we need to look at the bigger picture. Through four appearances, Woll is 0-2-2 with 12 goals allowed on 140 shots. Philadelphia has struggled to start the season, and Woll hasn't found a win. Still, he's often kept games close enough for his teammates to have a chance. That's worth something.

A goalie can't fix everything that's wrong with a team. I think we sometimes ask too much of goaltenders. When a team struggles, the goalie becomes an easy target. The goals-against average goes up, the save percentage drops, and the conversation quickly turns to whether the team has the right guy in net.

But what happens in front of the goalie matters, too.

Are the defencemen clearing rebounds? Are forwards helping out in their own zone? Is the team giving up too many dangerous chances? Is everybody doing the little things that make life easier for the player wearing the pads? Those questions matter in Philadelphia right now.

The Flyers have been outscored 16-2 in Dan Vladar's games, according to the report. That doesn't automatically mean the goalies are blameless, but it does suggest the problem is bigger than one player having a difficult night. And that's where things get interesting for Woll.

He arrived in Philadelphia with a chance to establish himself in a different setting. But a goalie needs help from the people in front of him, especially when confidence starts to disappear around a struggling team.

The Flyers need to make life easier for both Vladar and Woll.

I'm not suggesting Woll will solve Philadelphia's problems by himself. Nobody can do that. But if the Flyers want to find out what they have in him, they need to give him a reasonable chance to succeed. That means defending better, limiting quality chances, and finding a little more consistency across the lineup.

For Woll, the challenge is to keep working and not let a difficult start define his season. For Philadelphia, it's a reminder that rebuilding a team takes more than finding a goalie and hoping for the best. Sometimes, the goalie isn't the whole problem. Sometimes, he's just the last person everybody sees before the puck goes in.