Quote:
Originally Posted by MUBLUES09
I don't think there's any truth to that at all. IMO, the only scenarios where Elliott goes to Peoria instead of Bishop is if he, 1) gets injured or 2) doesn't compete in pre-season and camp or 3) shows the team he's unwilling to battle/compete for the back-up role
I don't think Blues management ever had any real intent on selecting Bishop over Elliott. And I'm not just saying that with 20/20 hindsight now that Elliott was an All-Star and Bishop is in Ottawa, I said it at the time of the signing and since camp started.
|
What makes this true pretty obviously is that they were even looking for a backup in the first place. Bishop had been in the Blues system a LONG time. He'd played over 100 games for the farm club and had been basically bad in his 13 games in the NHL with a few exceptions. If they'd had confidence in Bishop they'd have just said, ok, you've earned the backup job and not gone out and gotten a goalie. The fact they went after Smith tells you they were not wanting Bishop to be the backup – Smith wouldn't have been competing for the job with Bishop. They signed Elliott to that minimum deal and said, ok Ben, you've not been very good either up here or in Peoria but you've now got a shot to win the job. But to beat out a guy who'd alrady had 110 games in the NHL he was going to have to be better in camp. He wasn't. I don't know why some fans are saying he was, but Bishop is from St. Louis and I think that influences people to some degree. At any rate, Elliott has been lights out (and some of the people saying "Elliott's just the backup" are the same ones touting Bishop as having been better in camp) and fully justified that decision, possibly the single best personnel decision in the NHL this season.
Now, here's the part where you have to admire Bishop. He took the disappointment of that outcome, went back down and concentrated on proving everybody wrong, and he's had his only great pro season and now has a one year, one way contract to show for it.
I don't think any Blues fans aren't rooting for Bishop to succeed. Anyone should admire who didn't quit when facing adversity. But that's the same story for Elliott. Nobody ever handed Elliott anything. He'd played a starter's number of games for two years and then had to sign a league minimum two-way deal. He has worked his butt off. There's no doubt in my mind Elliott being completely willing and able to steal Halak's job pushed Halak's compete level higher. The report on Halak was he was somewhat uninspired/uncompetitive at practice while Elliott was fighting to stop every single puck every day, practice, game, whatever. Now reports are that Halak has really picked it up at practice as well. The two guys get along great. We'll never know what Bishop would have done if he'd just been handed the job and the Blues hadn't gone with a Plan A (Smith) and then a Plan B (Elliott) for getting a backup who wasn't him heading into the new season, but we can't argue with the results of Plan B.
