CrashingTheGoalie

by Ron Spence

Cory Schneider was presented with the “Aldege “Baz” Bastien Memorial Award” as the AHL’s best goalie for 2008-09.

Canucks’ fans believe that he will thus become the next Roberto or Martin, but the history of the award doesn’t support this belief:

A few of the Baz winners have become good NHL goalies.

Most teams today would take Buffalo’s Ryan Miller – who won the award for the 2004-05 season. Felix Potvin was brilliant at times and brutal at other times. So was Jim Carey, but for a shorter career.

Jon Casey, Manny Legace, Martin Biron and Dwayne Roloson had decent NHL careers.

But, when you look at the list: Jason Labarbera won the award twice and is a backup netminder in Phoenix; Mark Laforest won twice, but only played in a total of 102 NHL games; Dany Sabourin is a career backup, playing at the most 24 games in one season.

And if you look at the goalies’ names written in the blue rows – the ones who played for Vancouver – not many ‘nucks’ fans would want any of them on their roster – during their prime – even as a backup.

So, Cory Schneider is the most recent winner of the AHL’s goalie of the year.

Will he become the next Ryan Miller? Or will he be another Jim Carey?

Who knows?

But, ‘nucks’ fans shouldn’t be expecting rival GMs to be giving away the farm to find out.

To get any value, Schneider has to play in the NHL, and backup Roberto Luongo.