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Pretty soon the Toronto Maple Leafs are going to need a goaltender.

Not two goaltenders. One.

As in the one guy who clearly gives the Leafs the best chance to win every night he’s in there.

A goaltender who stops not just the puck but also any conversation about who should playing most every night. Someone who can withstand a couple poor performances without finding himself watching from the bench for a game or two.

As the first two weeks of this NHL season has demonstrated, the Maple leafs don’t have that.

But they’re going to need it because it’s hard to think of a good team in recent NHL history that didn’t have a clearly defined no. 1 goaltender and a backup.

It’s fine to say that having two players compete for the job on an ongoing basis is a good thing. But if that were really true, every team would do it. And they don’t, especially the good ones.

The daily guessing game over who will play goal on a given night doesn’t do anything for team building or chemistry since it usually leaves one goaltender with his nose at least slightly out of joint, and the potential of a split between teammates who sympathize and those who don’t.

It’s not a problem specific to the Maple Leafs. It’s a problem specific to human nature which is why most teams prefer not avoid this potentially damaging dynamic.

And those who don’t deal with it, who let it linger too long, do so at their peril. Just ask the Vancouver Canucks about that.

There are really two types of teams in hockey: those which have found their franchise goaltender and those that are in the forest still looking.

The last time the Leafs had a definite no. 1 goaltender, an established NHL netminder who didn’t have to prove his worth on a week-by-week basis? Ed Belfour during the first season coming out of the great lockout.

Goaltending is far from the only area in which the Maple Leafs have come-up short over the past decade but the near continuous passing of the torch from Belfour to Andrew Raycroft, to Vesa Toskala, to the Monster, to James Reimer and Jonathan Bernier is certainly part of the problem during that span.

Of course had they decided to hand it to Tuuka Rask at some point during that span we wouldn’t be having this conversations, but I digress.

The situation in Toronto still has some time to play-out.

The Leafs have said for more than a year that they believe they have two No. 1 goaltenders.

Sooner, rather than later, they need find out if they have one.