NHL Goalie Breakdown: Juuse Saros

Welcome back NHL Goalie Breakdown’s presented by MAP South Goaltending. This segment is designed for goalies to learn how to think critically and evaluate goalies when watching games and highlights. I encourage you all to comment and direct message in hopes of continuing the conversation in order to help your game. Also, please DM me your recommendations for next week’s post!

This weeks’ segment is on Juuse Saros. Saros is what most people view as “Vertically Challenged”, listed at 5’11. He was able to overcome this stigma by being an elite athlete and using hockey IQ in order to work his way from the AHL to the NHL. This season, he took the starting job away from legend Pekka Rinne and helped the Predators into a playoff position at the time of the NHL freeze.

We will focus on his technical and tactical game with it broken down into different scenarios: Line Rush and In-Zone. And how this has lead him to a solid 17-12-4 record, with a 2.70 GAA and 0.914 Sv% on a team that gives up a number of high danger scoring opportunities (10.94 per game, source: Natural Stat Trick).