Mike Reagan isn’t just being a proud coach when he says the Flin Flon Bombers have the two best returning goaltenders in the SJHL.
Virtually every other club in the league would pray to have either Zac Robidoux or Brenden Newton, nevermind both of them.
Both Robidoux and Newton were top five in the SJ for save-percentage and top seven for goals-against average in the regular season.
It is difficult to say which netminder is the better of the pair, or whether that is even discernable.
Newton, Flin Flon’s top rookie, put up slightly better stats than Robidoux but also had the benefit of playing 21 fewer games. Moreover, Newton was at his hottest later in the season, when the Bombers were at their best.
But some fans wonder whether Newton is the real deal. Yes, he had a great rookie season, they say, but will he suffer a sophomore slump?
Robidoux is a proven winner with a Royal Bank Cup to his credit. His numbers were not as strong as Newton’s in the playoffs, but at least some of that is attributable to bad luck and perhaps some less-than-optimal performances by the team in front of him.
With Robidoux entering his final year of junior A eligibility, expect him to be hungrier than ever in 2016-17 – very bad news for opposing players.
Reagan, Flin Flon’s head coach and GM, fully expects offers for one of his prized puckstoppers. He’s not ruling out a move, but nor does he sound eager to pull the trigger.
“We’ve got to really sit back and look at things,” Reagan said this week. “At the end of the day, if I get the right offer for someone, I’ve got to really look at it seriously. I think everybody is well aware that we’ve got two great goaltenders, and I’m sure I’m going to be getting some phone calls at some point. But we also really like both kids and think that you need two good goaltenders to get a championship, and we don’t want to overlook the fact that we’ve got that right now.”
In a perfect world, the Bombers would bring in the help they’ll obviously need up front – their entire top line of Joel Kocur, Brandon Switzer and Alex Smith has aged out – while hanging on to both goaltenders.
But this is the real world, and Reagan knows an offer may come his way that is simply too good to reject.
If that happens, he will face one of the most difficult questions of his nine-years-and-counting tenure as Bombers GM: Is Robidoux preferable to Newton? Or vice-versa?
