Rick,

I think a lot of it will be determined by scheduling and how many B2B games that each team will have...

There's more travel for WC teams so I could see maybe more B2B games for them than East coast teams, you might see a lot more 3 games in 4 nights for them. Like a west coast Canadian trip of Edmonton, Calgary and Van over 4 nights. Or even a LA, Ana, SJ, Phx and Dal trip over a week (which is 5 games over 7 nights), which will see a lot more work from the backups.

Back to your question...

2nd thing you need to consider is quality of backup as competition. A goalie that has a better quality backup, the coaching staff will naturally "timeshare" more.

3rd thing is how close will the team be to playoff contention. A team on the cusp might find themselves in a few more "must win" divisional games which they would tend to want to ice their "best" teams, which could mean goalies playing in more B2B games. Where as teams that will "coast" into the playoffs or are bottom feeders will probably see more "split" time situations.

Ward - is a bit of a workhorse, so he should see a plenty of starts. He's usually around the 80% mark in his history. With Boucher and Peters (12-6-1, 2.44 and .911 in the AHL this season), so there's a bit of competition there to maybe ease Ward off a bit, especially if they want to keep him fresh for a playoff run. I could see him drop down to maybe 70-75% of starts, so around 35-37 starts out of 50 games...

Kipper - is a workhorse, so he should still get plenty of starts. 87.8, 86.6 and 82.9% of GS during the last 3 seasons, with the major competition from Karlsson who doesn't really posts a lot of "quality" stats to begin with, Kipper should be safe for 80-85% of GS, IMO. So maybe 40-42 out of 50 games.

Rinne - is typically a workhorse, but with that said was that because Trotz didn't trust Lindback or was Rinne just unbenchable last season? One thing to keep in mind is that prior to the 72 starts last season, he was averaging around 55 starts the 3 seasons prior. I'm not saying that things are going to revert back, but the 70+ starts could have been an abberation. Another thing is that they also re-signed Chris Mason as the backup. He's still a pretty decent backup who could easily take 10-15 starts especially in B2B situations. Rinne I think could go either way, I could see 40+ starts from him if the Preds are in a tight playoff race, but I could also see them ease him to 35-40 given that he's already played quite a bit in the KHL already this season.

My 2 cents.

Hope it helps!

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