|
|
Post by Declan on Aug 13, 2009 9:49:19 GMT -5
A lot of people believe young Semyon Varlamov earned the right to be the Caps' No. 1 goaltender with his mostly stellar play in the playoffs.
Coach Bruce Boudreau is not one of them.
Boudreau said this morning that veteran Jose Theodore will enter training camp as the top goalie and it will be up to Varlamov and Michal Neuvirth to unseat him.
"Right now Jose is the No. 1 guy and the other two young men have got to come in and play the way they did last year and try to push him out," Boudreau said this morning at KCI, where Arturs Irbe was announced as the team's new goalie coach. "Jose won 33 games for us last year, and like the year before when Cristobal Huet got hot down the stretch, Varly came in and did a great job where we just couldn't take him out."
"But that was 13 games," Boudreau added, referring to Varlamov's postseason run. "It doesn't make up for 12 years of experience. I've seen an awful lot of goalies come in at a young age and go into a slump for a year or two. I think Jose has earned and deserves the right [to be] No. 1 guy."
Hmmm... Sounds like the competition for the starting job in goal is going to be pretty intense.
I'll have more on the hiring of Irbe later. Part of the reason Irbe was hired, according to GM George McPhee, was because he speaks Russian and will be able better convey the nuances of a complicated position to Varlamov, whose English is still spotty. |
|
