Ben Bishop Is Going To The Stanley Cup Final. Good For Him.

So, Ben Bishop is from St. Louis. Ben Bishop also used to be a St. Louis Blue. About half of the fanbase seems to have the attitude of "good job! Best of luck," while the other half has the attitude of "dammit, here's another one that Army traded away that's being successful somewhere else."

Both make sense. What doesn't make sense right now is the typical Blues fan tendency to hate the team's goaltending and to find the grass greener everywhere else. Oh, if only Bishop were in net for the Blues right now! He would've played so much better than Jake Allen!

While it's true that Bishop has been very solid during the playoffs, let's look at this last series against the Rangers.

That vacillates between solid and "oh my God."

Keep in mind that results like this are likely when you have a team that plays #reckless like the Bolts, so brace yourselves for goalie hiccups next season if Ken Hitchcock can actually make a team play recklessly. It's tough to compare stats in a small sample size between two teams that play different styles of hockey, but still. Close your eyes and imagine if this was a series between, say, the Blues and the Ducks. Imagine the Blues in the Conference Final. Imagine they lose, and Bishop has these exact stats.

How do you react?

Hockey is a team sport. If we could get away at leaving everything at the feet of the goaltender, good and bad, that would be for the best. The Bolts responded as a team and shut down the Rangers' offense - or what offense they had. The Bluues did not respond when Allen (a rookie goaltender in his first series, mind you) faltered, and they are playing golf.

None of this detracts from how well Bishop has played overall this post-season, but it is helpful to see how well the Lightning have played too. If the Blues had picked up the pace in round one, no one would care about Allen's numbers or performance, especially relative to Ben Bishop.

Just be happy for the guy. There's enough room for flagellation for things that this team has done in 2015; let's not beat a dead horse that died in 2012.