So at the start of the preseason I wrote about how Price will gain his confidence back and become the goalie we all know he can be if we're just patient and show him our support. When Price commented about how the preseason is irrelevant the media and fans had a field day saying that Price has everything to prove and should not take any games lightly. So far there has not been a single game this guy didn't keep us in. The only times he didn't were times the team couldn't put the puck in the net 3-0 losses where we just couldn't finish.
It's now 15 games in and Price is a top 10 goalie in the NHL. He has 8 wins and has posted two shutouts already. One against a team like Vancouver none the less. He's 10th in GAA but has played 3 more games than any of his competition. He's 13th in save percentage as well which is pretty impressive again as only Cam Ward has played a comparable number of games thus far. Obviously another shutout or a 5-0 loss would drastically change these numbers but it's always nice to see the guy so many doubted winning games for your team. Obviously it's still very early but if you've seen Price play you can tell not only is he on the ball this year but he's improving.
How do I see Price improving? Well it's actually pretty obvious for me. He's much better on the glove, early on in the season this was a weakness in my opinion. Opponents would go for the glove side, he wouldn't get it up fast enough, sometimes he wasn't really positioned that well to make the save in the first place. I noticed as games went on slowly he started to get confidence in his glove hand. He would still get beat on the glove but he was improving. Now it seems you won't be getting too many shots past Carey's trapper anymore. He really seems to have improved that element of his game and what's crazy is just how drastically it's improved from game 1 until now. The second thing I noticed is that in the past Price wasn't a very good puck handler. When he would get the puck often times he wouldn't be patient enough or even sometimes too patient. He would pass it to a guy whose covered and it would create chances for the other team. He still does it sometimes but I mean, every goalie does now and then. The point is though he's improved this drastically this season. Positionally he's also better and seems to be going down less often or at least less quickly. He plays big in his crease and really makes it tough on the opposition to score. Another thing I found about Price in past years is that he would often times have a good game but then a bad ending. Would let in a goal with a few minutes left. Could have just been bad luck but he seems much more focused out there.
So now that the confidence is rolling in, he's gotten himself into a top 10 position in the league, is it any wonder Price had this tremendous talent and the confidence to back it all along? Sure he was down on himself after last season, any professional athlete in his position would be. The point is though he bounced back. He took his bumps along the way and he grew as a player but more importantly as a human being. Up until now we've seen Carey Price the boy but I think this year we're going to see Carey Price the man, and I think this is just Price playing like Price, if he goes on fire at some point I think we'll really frustrate some teams. Price has all the tools to be a top 10 goalie in the NHL for years to come. Right now he's showing that his first season wasn't a fluke and that the only fluke was last season. We are incredibly lucky as a team to have a guy as gifted as he is in between the pipes. I'm positive by game thirty I'll still be happy with his game, he's getting better and better as time goes on. Now the team has to feed off of his confidence and the fact that they have a guy like him in goal and start putting the puck in the net.
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