"Career Outlook: Backup Goaltender American Hockey League"

Ass-pat to Spokant for sending this my way.  Evidently, there's a goaltender training school somewhere up north, it appears that it's perhaps in Calgary, based on the phone number.  The website doesn't list a location--but they want you to go to their training school.  I'm no marketing expert, but...

Anyways, the "we" who run or write for the website obviously took in the Calgary/Americans game on Sunday and wrote up their evaluations of goaltenders Martin Jones and our Alexander Pechurskiy.  They (he?) sound like they know what they're talking about, like knowledgeable and whatnot, but they don't speak especially highly of From Russia With Glove.

Click HERE for the .pdf of their "report".  The scoring/rating criteria at the end of the report is not explained at all, best I can tell it's a 1-10 scale, 10 being "Excellent", 1 being a "P" which I would guess indicates "Proficient".  I'm gonna also guess "A" = "Average", "G" = "Good", and "VG" = "Very Good".

Author of the report says there's three areas in which Alex needs to be stronger:

• Rebound control
• Active hands
• Awareness of players away from the puck
• Focus/emotional control

I am admittedly no expert on anything, let alone goaltending, and who knows if this guy is either.  However, some of his analysis was spot on (well, spot on for matching my opinion).

"As a goaltender, Pechurskiy can make his job much easier by practicing solid rebound control.  By putting the pucks in the corners or cradling the puck for a whistle he will eliminate the second, third and so on attempts that Pechurskiy faced during this game.  Many of his rebounds were placed directly back up the slot where they were banged away at again."

"The changes that have been made to today's games and the adaptations that shooters have made everywhere has resulted in goaltenders needing to be more active with their hands.  Pechurskiy showed a lot of blocking throughout this game and had very locked elbows on shots.  With active hands he will be pushing the puck or catching the puck and eliminating a lot of work that he currently needs to complete."

"Alexander Pechurskiy ['s] game was missing an active head or searching for players away from the puck.  Instead Pechurskiy was too focused on the puck carrier and was trying to guess where the pass was being made instead of following the puck to where the puck carrier was located."

"There was multiple instances during this game where Alexander was distracted by people in the stands, cleaning the ice or by the jumbotron.  He was constantly focused on the wrong stimuli even when the play was going on and looked to be in threat of a quick shot many times during the game."

"After watching him come into a Pens game earlier in this year I expected Alexander to dominate the game.  Instead what I saw was a goalie who was unfocused and unable to read the play.  Currently, Pechurskiy is slow coming across (laterally) and opens his five-hole too much.  Pechurskiy was too non-shalant (sic) when handling the puck which will result in a goal or two against because of his inability to focus solely on what he is doing."

When supposed "experts" use and misspell words like nonchalant,they lose some credibility in my book.  If you want to be taken seriously, learn to spell and use grammar, punctuation, and vocabulary correctly.  One more reason to stay away from the message boards, your head will explode.  But I digress...

I've never hidden my bias when it comes to my goalies.  If you've been reading this blog at all you know I didn't particularly want FRWG to be here because I believed Drew earned the starting spot with his hard work and didn't want that taken away from him.  That being said, he's here, he's part of my team so I support him 1000%.  In addition, can't really complain about the depth in net that Bob has acquired.

I have noticed FRWG does have difficulty with rebound control.  Often goals that are scored on him are 2nd or 3rd chances.  Is that his responsibility or should the defence help clear those out?  Both, obviously.  I haven't noticed a lack of focus this evaluator talks about, but I also tend to watch the rest of the game, not just the goalie.  Evaluator noticed one play where "he lost his cool completely on a harmless play".  He is feisty, that is true.  He doesn't like guys in his crease and will push and shove them out of his way.  The evaluator feels that this kind of activity affects his play, and I'm sure it does.  To what extent I have no idea.

This evaluator took in only one game of Pechurskiy's and it's unfair (stomps feet in mild tantrum) to say his career outlook will be "Backup goaltender in the American Hockey League" based solely on that game.  Ok, one game and his NHL debut.  Still not fair.  Pens scouts were at that game and at the Edmonton game as well to take in his performance.  Too bad they don't publish their findings (do they?) to compare.  I would love to see what they have to say and how it compares to the author of this evaluation.  I'm guessing they can at least spell nonchalant (spell-check man, it's automatic).