The goalie plan, explained without the word "tandem"

Every team in the league now describes its goaltending with the same word, and the word explains nothing. Here is the Flyers plan in plain English.

• The starter plays sixty games if he is healthy and playing well. Nobody has said that number out loud, but that is the number.

• The backup plays the second half of back-to-backs and one start a week otherwise, the workload that made him effective last season.

• The third goalie stays in the developmental league and is the plan if either of the above goes wrong for more than two weeks.

• Nobody is competing for the job in camp. The camp is for the third goalie.

That is the whole plan. It is a good one, and the only way it fails is the way every goalie plan fails: injury, or a starter who forgets how to stop pucks in November. Neither is something a plan prevents.