Thursday, January 15, 2015

Zachary Fucale: Memorial Cup, Gold Medal...Stanley Cup next?

Habs prospect Zachary Fucale was scheduled to start his first game with his new team (Quebec Remparts) last night. After having won the Memorial Cup in 2013 along with the Junior World Championship earlier this year, I thought it would be a good idea to take a look back at Fucale's career and stats to give us an idea of how well he is doing, since many are thinking he is our future in terms of goaltending.


Let's start by looking at his QMJHL regular season stats. Over the past three years (from 2011 to 2014), he managed to keep a record of 113 wins, 32 losses, 12 overtime losses, 8 shootout losses while keeping a 2.59 goal against average and a 0,903 save %. This year, he is going on a 13-9-2 record with a 3.20 GAA and a 0.890%. While he seems to be slumping statistically, we must not forget he was playing for Halifax Mooseheads, who lost their two star players (Nathan MacKinnon and Jonathan Drouin) over the past two seasons. Let's keep in mind he will now be playing for the Quebec Remparts, who will be the host team for the upcoming Memorial Cup. These Remparts have built up a competitive team in order to win the Canadian championship by getting back forward Anthony Duclair from the New York Rangers and trading for defenseman Matt Murphy, so technically, Fucale should start getting more consecutive wins as well as dropping his GAA and raising his save %.

As for his playoffs stats, he went 35-12, keeping a 2.54 GAA and a 0,903%. What this basically means is that whatever the game or the situation he is in, he will be the same goaltender, pressure or not. By keeping pretty much the same stats throughout the entire season (playoffs included), he is proving that he is a reliable goaltender over the long term. 

Not only that, but Fucale went undefeated during the latest Junior World Championship, being Canada's #1 goaltender. During the gold medal game, he had an opportunity to show everyone how he would do under pressure, and he did very good, protecting a one-goal lead up until the very end of the game for a 5-4 win over Russia, especially considering Canada's defense was invisible after their fifth goal.

Last night marked his first start with the Remparts. Fucale got a pretty quiet, albeit solid night, stopping all 11 shots he faced. However, let's just say his entire team played very well, giving pretty much nothing to the Acadie-Bathurst Titan. To give you an idea of how one-sided this game was, at one point during the game, Quebec had more goals than Acadie-Bathurst had shots on Fucale. With 16 more wins, the Rosemere native will be ranked #1 in terms of all-time wins by a goaltender in the QMJHL. Not a small feat

If you were in Marc Bergevin' shoes, would you trade one of Montreal's current goaltenders? Considering Price is being a top 5 NHL goaltender, Tokarski being very promising and Mike Condon doing pretty good with Hamilton, what would you do ?


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