Claimed:So Where Does He Go From Here?

[AwfulHomesick 148]

 

COLOGNE, Germany

 

Usually in any professional hockey league, the thought of throwing a rookie goaltender to the wolves scares supporters and even the rookie himself. During Season 38 of the Victory Hockey League, the fans were introduced to two new faces behind masks that will make their mark on their respective teams, Kimmo Salo of the Helsinki Titans, and Blaine Olynick of the Cologne Express.

 

As the ongoing Salo vs Olynick feud takes a break as both teams are taking their offseason break, one side of the feud looks to be a teeter-totter of ride through his first year. Blaine Olynick received a baptism by fire this season, starting in 64 of the 72 games this regular season for his Express, gathering a respectable 22 wins for a rookie goaltender. Among all starting goaltenders, his save percentage is the lowest, and his goals against average is third worst out of the ten netminders. Despite putting up more wins his counterpart Salo, the performances each put for their teams throughout the team are pretty much polar opposite. As the Helsinki Titans heavily relied on Salo to stand on his head a lot of the games, Olynick had a bit of an easier ride to the end of the season. During all of this, Salo was near the top of save percentage while Olynick stayed near the bottom of the pack.

 

Blaine already sees himself a much more better goaltender now than he was at the start of the season. The experience of looking back at the 72 games gives the goaltender a good insight on what went wrong, and how the good things can be executed to the team's fullest potential. "I feel like part of the rookie season for every player is learning every single thing you can from others. You become a sponge of information and you use it for the rest of your career. The veteran guys here like Collier have been extremely insightful to me," said Olynick.

 

Olynick kept close tabs to Martin Brodeur's season, who despite being a legend of the game, had a similar kind of season to Olynick. Putting up wins when needed but in ugly fashion. Being an admirer of Brodeur, Olynick echoed his statements in a recent interview: "Marty once said that he was never a stats guy. The only column he ever wants to look at is the wins column, and I feel that is all that matters as well. At the end of the day, the only statistic that will get us to the playoffs is a W, not what my save percentage is."

 

Brave stance by the soon-to-be sophomore goalie. With the Express being one of the rebuilding teams that could see an upswing of things by next season with the influx of youth and skilled players being injected into the line up, Olynick must do his part to contribute to the uprise. Planning to take training sessions to work on his overall form, Olynick wants to live up to the expectations that were given by analysts and grow to be a winning goaltender in Cologne.

 

 

[Phil 5,119]

[Guest Svoboda_3]

Content: 3/3

517 words. This was an excellently written article about the season of Olynick and the obstacles faced during this rookie campaign. Obviously you and Salo have bright futures ahead of you and this season was only a minor speed bump.

Grammar: 2/2

wins his counterpart = more wins than his counterpart

more better = better

who = which

Olynick. Putting = Olynick; putting

line up = line-up

Appearance: 1/1

Loved the green look.

Overall: 6/6

[Smarch 3,153]

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