@None Shall Pass
And at what point, do we say ''This is who he is now?'' Will one more .90-something do that? Or do we need two more years? I gave him the benefit of the doubt after 16-17, it's one poor year. 2 poor years? It's hard to ignore now.
Sorry, couldn't quote your post from the old thread.
After 10 - 20 more games for me, though you and others had written him off as AHL fodder after the first period, where he stopped 11 of 12 shots. This board is absurd.
Sorry but not sorry, I was saying for the past two years that Cory was playing through something nagging. If you're bored, go look for the posts, because I know I was making them. I was beating those drums hard because it was obvious how he was laboring laterally and his slow recoveries.
As it turns out, I was right. And the surgery this offseason should have (In theory) corrected those issues.
Today was his first game that he started since the surgery. To be frank, he played a lot better than I thought he would have. He made some really great, tough saves tonight. I still think he was having some bad luck, too. I'll explain:
The first goal was not great, but whatever, literally every goalie will let up a couple of goals exactly like that one over the course of the season. Not great, but they're not all going to be gems. Call it bad if you want, you'll get only minimal argument from me.
The next two goals (and the waved off one) can be mostly blamed on the defensemen on ice at the time:
The waved off goal that was trapped under his pads, you can see our two defensemen staring at him, literally not moving at all. They're not even trying to box out the forward who potted the rebound. I forget who the two d-men were at the time.
The second goal is more of the same. Cory definitely left a decent rebound there, but that is the reason you have two d-men playing down low on a PK, to clear rebounds and box out forwards trying to get to those rebounds. Butcher, and to a lesser extent Severson, didn't even make an attempt to; unluckily enough, they were only killing the penalty because Mueller was in the box for getting his head punched in and it was Lovejoy's penalty. Rebounds are bound to happen. You have to mitigate what they can do to you.
The third goal, he sorta whiffed on the glove save, but kept the puck out of the net. Butcher, driving the net, completely ignored the off-wing skater, who had a clear path to that rebound.
I have a lot of time for Cory because last year I lost feeling in one of my arms for a month because of a spinal disc pushing on a nerve and it took me a while to re-learn, and even moreso re-TRUST, that arm to do things. I still catch myself nursing it somewhat, ten months later. After two years of having a funky hip, I imagine that he's still not feeling totally comfortable with it, thinking that every stretch could end in disaster. So, I have a lot of time for him to test himself and relearn how to do what he did for years prior to that. Maybe coaches don't - I don't know, I'm just a dude who watches the games on TV.
I don't think he goes back to being elite all-star Cory who singlehandedly prevented us from winning draft lotteries while we were trash, but I'm willing to bet that he does better than a .90something when this season is over.
