VV was sought after because of his rookie year numbers and his very cheap $716k salary. He over achieved. The scouting report is out on him now and it will be a big challenge for him to improve on his rookie season. You can potentially mock my words if you want, but I'm telling you Vanecek will have a sophomore slump season!
Thanks for listing the facts because you just proved what I said. Copley, Samsonov and Vanecek all rookies in their first season. Copley/Samsonov already showed to fail improvement in their 2nd pro year(Copley wasn't even good enough to stick and Sammy did a whole bunch of wrong). My statement also is predicting what's gonna happen to VV. He will have a sophomore slump season.
I wasn’t mocking your words, I was trying to make sense of them. The last two rookie goaltenders to have sophomore seasons in the NHL were Grubauer and Samsonov - both of whom are still in the league, and one of whom was a Vezina finalist.
Copley put up okay numbers in a backup role - Vanecek did it as the team’s starter for most of the season. Vanecek has just had two strong pro seasons in a row - all-star numbers in the AHL, and respectable numbers in the NHL. Copley was sub-.900 in the AHL the year before he backed up Holtby, and then put up similar numbers in the AHL the following year.
At any rate, Copley lost the job to Samsonov not because he underperformed, but because they needed to see what they had in Samsonov before Holtby’s contract was up. There really isn’t much of a pattern you can draw from this, that I can see anyway.
None of that is to say you’re wrong about Vanecek - you may well be right that Vanecek will struggle. He is not technically exceptional or excellent in any area, which doesn’t give him that much to offset his weaknesses. But he’s still young (for a modern goaltender), like Samsonov, and has a decent chance to get better rather than decline (though perhaps with a different goalie coach…). Maybe both goaltenders will put up better numbers not having to play the same seven teams on repeat all year. But it isn’t Vanecek I’d be worried about right now - especially if Samsonov is going to be treated as a number 1.
And you still have to wonder how both goaltenders might be performing differently if they were under a different coach - imagine what Mitch Korn could do with them.