At OSU, every year it seems that there is a goalie tandem playing.  Coach Welsh seems to go with the hot hand, but in the end they each usually play about the same minutes every year.
 
I happen to like this strategy, provided both players are reasonably close in caliber to each other.  It seems to make the goalies play harder , knowing that there is someone all too willing to take his spot in between the pipes.  It also makes them unable to play haphazard, knowing the coach will yank them.
 
An incident like the latter occured last year vs Ferris St I believe.  We were playing at home, and the Brown made a save only to lazily pass it up the ice.  The pass was picked by a cherry-picking wing, who was all but given an empty net.  Brown was prompty yanked, and sat for a couple of games.  when he came back he was unstoppable (or as unstopable as an OSU player can be :) ).
 
I think that the tandem question not only depends on the abilities of the goalies, but largely on the psyche of the players involved.  A good goalie could lose his confidence in a system like OSU's.
 
My $.02
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Doug Bodmann     [log in to unmask]
 
"I hate quotations" -Ralph Waldo Emerson