NHL Goalies: Andrew Raycroft and Ray Emery

Andrew Raycroft has let in 13 goals in his three most recent starts for the Toronto Maple Leafs, dropping the team to 13th in the Eastern Conference with the Leafs' most recent loss, a 6-1 disaster against the New York Rangers.

Raycroft is another millstone around the neck of the organization courtesy of John Ferguson Junior. Over-paid, under-performing and a bit too comfortable with the notion of losing. The Leafs don't have a hope in hell of unloading him in a trade anytime soon.

A player just can't win regarding his reaction to losing, can he? Play it as smooth and professional as Raycroft and he comes off as flippant and not too bothered about whether things ever get turned around.

Dave Feschuk of the Toronto Star wrote a column at the end of last season that solidified the image of Raycroft in my mind as a goaltender who is somehow a tad too casual when the losses start piling up. Being able to look on the bright side of things is an admirable and helpful quality to have in most situations.

But "that's good enough," or "at least it wasn't 7-1" doesn't instill confidence or impress people in the world of professional sports. Especially when fat contracts have been slurped up and performances to match the accompanying dollars have been in short supply.

Whether the image projected by certain mannerisms or responses is an accurate indication of a person's character is often hard to determine. Personality traits and speech patterns elicit niggling feelings in others, though at first they may push such concerns aside or not even be conscious of them. It's when on-ice performance coincides with those suspicions that the initial feelings or hunches are validated.

Regardless of how much he's being paid, it's hard not to feel a certain amount of sympathy for Raycroft. He could be in for the defining, and quite possibly final, stretch of play in his professional career.

What Leafs management say about Vesa Toskala is essentially meaningless as they have shown that they flat out lie regarding player injuries. He will probably be out for at least a few more games. While Scott Clemmensen has been called up from the Toronto Marlies, Raycroft will likely get ridden into either passable play or see his limited skills further disintegrate.

Goaltending problems are plaguing the other NHL team from Ontario as well.

With the Ottawa Senators, their 25 year-old back-up goalie Ray Emery is lowering his stock with his fellow players and other teams that might have been willing to take him in a trade with the Sens. His situation is in many ways the opposite of Raycroft's.

Emery has proven he can play (though not at the level of an elite tender in my opinion). But when faced with the proposition of recovering from an injury and playing behind Martin Gerber, his less than professional conduct has him veering towards those reputation-killer tags in the NHL: "locker-room cancer," "selfish," and "undisciplined."

Some fans spin the over-the-top, near tantrums from Emery as the antithesis of Raycroft. Apparent proof that he hates being denied the opportunity to compete and win so much that he will stop at nothing. If Emery's work ethic and discipline matched this supposed desire to win, then such claims might have some credence. As it is, he's turning himself into a liability.

Loyalty runs out faster with players who are full of themselves and they become expendable a lot sooner than they might have otherwise. Especially when they can't always back up such arrogance with real results.

A happy medium between these two extremes would be the ideal.

A sometimes snarling, usually even-tempered piece of work who puts on the odd display of emotion, takes care of business on the ice, sucks it up when he has to take one for the team and somehow projects the feeling that he's thankful for whatever time he has in the NHL.

Oh, and a cool mask.