Should Jordan Binnington’s performance against France be cause for concern?

Canada’s men’s Olympic hockey team may have trounced France by a score of 10-2 on Sunday, putting them in prime position to claim the top overall seed heading into the elimination round, but not everything was roses coming out of their final game of the group stage. The 10 goals they scored were great, but the two they allowed could be enough to resuscitate some old worries.

Goaltending was seen as Canada’s main weakness coming into the Olympics, but they quelled those concerns over their first two games, allowing just one goal on 51 combined shots. On Sunday, however, starter Jordan Binnington gave up two goals on just 14 shots, and both were of the “shaky” variety. In the first period, Binnington let a juicy rebound go into the slot for France’s Floran Douay to bury. Then, in the third, Sacha Treille beat Binnington clean with a slapshot from the top of the left circle.

On Daily Faceoff‘s Canada vs France Post-Game show, hosts Tyler Yaremchuk and Jeff Marek discussed whether Binnington lost his grasp on Canada’s starting job with his performance against France.

Tyler Yaremchuk: I don’t think there’s a conversation. It’s Jordan Binnington’s net. Is it story or no story that if it’s Binnington’s crease?

Jeff Marek: Oh, it’ll be a story. Make no mistake there will be a story. I don’t think it should be a story, I really don’t. I think that games like that are really tough for some netminders. I’ll give you an example. Nashville, I remember Chris Mason told me this one. We were having a conversation about Pekka Rinne, and what Pekka Rinne liked as a goaltender was to feel the puck a lot. When Barry Trotz was his coach, he would get like 10-15 shots in the first period, because Trots knew to let him feel the puck. Mattias Ekholm, don’t worry about suppressing every single shot here. Trotz gets fired, they bring in Peter Laviolette, and Laviolette’s whole thing is shot suppression. Our goalie can’t face 15 shots in the first period, he’s gotta face five, and Rinne struggled. There are some goaltenders that need to feel the puck. I would make the argument that most goaltenders need to feel the puck early. I think that a game like this is in some ways actually more difficult to play for some goalies than other games, because you’re not getting that volume of shots.

You can catch the full discussion and the rest of Sunday’s show here…