Further evidence that Don Cherry is a moron
Tonight on Coach's Corner (11/04/07) the man that picked Brian Bochenski to beat Crosby and Ovechkin as rookie of the year said Raycroft ran into trouble this year because he played too many games. It's fatigue he says.
Uh huh.
Mr. Cherry, let's look at Raycroft's stats on a month by month basis:
October: 11 GP; 5-4-2; 3.09 GAA; .894 SV%
November: 10 GP; 6-4-0; 2.50 GAA; .904 SV%
December: 10 GP; 4-4-2; 3.20 GAA; .867 SV%
January: 12 GP; 8-4-0; 2.500 GAA; .901 SV%
February: 12 GP; 5-4-3; 2.917 GAA; .854 SV%
March: 13 GP; 8-3-2; 2.69 GAA; .909 SV%
April: 4 GP; 1-2-0; 3.50 GAA; .829 SV%
So when exactly did the fatigue kick in?
Actually, looking closer at the numbers, Cherry might be on to something - maybe Raycroft is best utilized by only being allowed to play every other month. I'd be happy with his numbers for November, January, March. The Leafs just need to find a keeper who can play October, December, February and April...
I'm going to have to stick up for the old blowhard on this one. Raycroft started slowly, rounded into decent form, then the "we're gonna ride him to the promised land" quotes started coming, and a month later he looked like shit. I think fatigue definitely had something to do with how he played in April and the second half of March.
ReplyDeleteI'm not letting him off the hook, but fatigue was certainly a factor.
The numbers don't lie on this one Ninja. I charted his save percentage game-by-game and it's up and down like a yo-yo. 33 of his 72 starts he's below .900 SV% and 19 of those starts came in the first half of the season.
ReplyDeleteIn all five games leading up to the all-star break, his SV% was well over .900. After a week long break, he had two solid games before he fell back into his standard .890SV%. So much for the rest.
If anything, fatigue's responsible for making a crap goalie a craptastic goalie.
He's gotta go.
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