Joel Hofer heats up, earning consecutive starts. The Blues are riding his hand, for now, as their goalie rotation shifts.
MARYLAND HEIGHTS, Mo. -- Jim Montgomery and the St. Louis Blues were on a pretty close-to-the-vest schedule of when the goalie tandem of Jordan Binnington and Joel Hofer would start games.
Neither would get an extended period of games. Nobody started more than three games this season, although early in October, Binnington played in six straight games due to starts and a pair of Hofer goalie pulls, and one of his own.
There has always been a plan of who starts when, and when the other would get some added rest in a condensed schedule.
Well, for the fifth time in six games, Hofer will get another start, when Montgomery already tipped his hand and said the 25-year-old would start on Monday against the red-hot Buffalo Sabres, who come in on an eight-game winning streak.
It’s the time of year to ride the hot hand, and right now, the numbers show that Hofer, who is 4-1-0 in his past five starts and lowered his goals-against average down to 2.86 with an even .900 save percentage, is riding the hot hand.
“Hofer played so well the last game in the traffic and stuff, he’s going to go again tomorrow and we’ll just keep going game by game,” Montgomery said after practice on Sunday. “We’ve got to go and we can do this with both goalies, we feel, is I really liked to alternate in Boston. It just worked really well (with Jeremy Swayman and Linus Ullmark). It hasn’t worked as well here. It’s mostly because of the way we’ve played in front of them. But now we’re just going to roll with the hot hand and see how it goes. So we’re going to go game by game.”
Hofer is now 8-7-2 on the season but in the month of December, he has the sixth-best GAA (2.10) and fifth-best save percentage (.929) among goalies with five or more starts.
“I’m not really surprised by it,” Blues captain Brayden Schenn said. “He was with us when he was 19 or 20. In COVID, he came up and was kind of our third goalie during that camp and you could see how big he is, how well he plays the puck, but what people don’t see is now much he works off the ice on the mental side of the game and also working on his game on and off the ice. Not to put a lot of pressure on the guy, but he’s going to be a very, very good goalie in this league for a long time.”
Does Schenn see any similarities from what he saw six years ago from Binnington?
“Different. Different for sure,” he said. “I think what people don’t understand is for a guy like ‘Hofe’ to learn under a guy like ‘Binner.’ Just like ‘Binner’ learned from Jake. When you have a tandem that the older guy is a good mentor for you, this game’s not easy, it’s humbling and it humbles you at different times. I think both goalies rely on each other really well for support and push each other to get better, which is most important.”
Meanwhile for the 32-year-old Binnington, he’s 1-4-1 with a 4.51 GAA and .832 save percentage in December, and 7-9-6 with a 3.44 GAA and .870 save percentage on the season.
Admittedly, the Blues have said openly they’ve really stunk in front of Binnington, and at times in front of Hofer, for that matter, and Binnington has been on both ends of the spectrum of a goalie carousel; he was that “young” guy at 26 that unseated 29-year-old Jake Allen in 2019 and we all know how that turned out with a Stanley Cup championship. Then in 2022, he went into the playoffs with Ville Husso as the starter before replacing Husso for Game 4 of the first round against the Minnesota Wild and played incredibly until being knocked out with a knee injury in Game 3 of the second round when he was ran into by Nazem Kadri.
Sure, Binnington is probably not too thrilled right now considering how poorly the team has looked in front of him, but according to moneypuck.com, he is 83rd in goals-saved above expected among qualified goalies at minus-9.7. Only Ullmark is worse at minus-11.4. But the Blues have always been good at talking these things through with no matter who’s guarding the cage, and right now, Hofer is getting the results.
“You’ve got to communicate to him,” Montgomery said. “David Alexander does a great job of it. Him and I talk all the time. Sometimes we have different opinions on how it should work. His reasoning’s usually better than mine. Mine’s just stop the goddamn puck (laughing), but he’s got a lot more science and technical advice on it, so I usually just listen to him. But it’s very rare that I’ll stick to my gun.”
Part of Binnington’s mental process this season is not only making making himself better for the Blues but also making another impression on the brass for Team Canada for the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics 2026 after riding shotgun for Canada in winning the 4 Nations Face-Off last year. It’s got to be weighing on his mind.
“The natural competitor that he is, he wants to be there, he led Canada to the 4 Nations cup last year,” Montgomery said. “Knowing (Tampa Bay Lightning and Canada coach) Jon Cooper, it’s probably hard going against him now because you won with him. But he’s got to go earn it when he gets there and playing well before he gets there is a huge part of it, so yeah, sure it is.”
But before people begin to think there is a changing of the guard, Montgomery wants to reassure something.
“It’s way too much to read into that because it’s a long season, and I think for parts of last season, Hofer was playing better than Binnington, and who’d we play in the playoffs, and he was really good,” Montgomery said. “He was great for us. It’s too early, it’s a long season. There’s a lot of big games ahead of us, so it’s just going to depend on how we continue to build.
“They’re the strongest part of our team, the goaltenders, and we need them. Their ability to compete against each other daily and push each other to be better is what we need better at every position.”
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Category: General Sports
