An In-Depth Review of Cam Ward's Season
On my old blog, I did this for Washington Capitals goalies Michal Neuvirth and Semyon Varlamov and was planning on doing every goalie in the Southeast Division. I figured that I should continue this project here and I will start with Carolina's netminder, Cam Ward. He has been the starting goaltender for the Hurricanes for the last ever since the 2006 Stanley Cup Playoffs where he won the job from Martin Gerber and helped the Canes win their first Stanley Cup. Aside from the 2009-10 season when he was hurt, he has started in 60 or more games in every year, has had his save percentage slowly improve and was rewarded with a six-year contract extension worth $37.8 million which began this season. How did he respond to this? He started in more games than he ever has before (74), saw more shots than any other goalie in the NHL (2,375, closest was Carey Price with 2,147 shots faced) and posted the best save percentage of his career (.923). I am not the biggest fan of his contract because a long-term deal with a cap hit of over $6 mil is something you only give to elite goalies and I don't think Ward is in that calss yet but the good news is that he appears to be improving every season and proved to be very durable this past season and put up solid numbers while doing so. After the jump, we will take a closer look at Ward's 2010-11 season.
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