By Brad Lee
Manny Legace has been named to the Western Conference All-Star team. He's the lone Blues representative in a stacked Western Conference. As we've written around here before, the starting goaltender has carried this team all year. Early in the season when the Blues showed they could be for real, Legace played possibly the best hockey of his career. But lately, he's been even better. So even though we still love Boyes (shout it loud!), it's pretty fitting Legace is the lone player from St. Louis.
According to Jeremy Rutherford of the Post-Dispatch:
I did some further number crunching on his recent stretch and came up with this: since the Blues’ 5-0 loss to Detroit on Dec. 26, Legace has a 0.46 GAA and a .979 save percentage, stopping 95 of 97 shots.
Damn. You can't ask or expect a starting goaltender to play any better. Hopefully the fans will give him an even bigger ovation than the one he got Tuesday night after setting the franchise regular season scorless minute streak. You think he feels a little vindicated after he was dumped by Detroit after 2005-06 and no one else in the league wanted to sign him? The Blues showed some faith in him and he's rewarded the franchise with excellent goaltending.
(UPDATE: Here's a nice little column about Manny and the Detroit snub)
By the way, do you think Dominik Hasek feels a little odd today? The other goalie he's help marginalize in Detroit, Chris Osgood is one of the other two Western Conference goaltenders.