Greetings, all. When it comes to goalies in the Jackets organization, you know Anton Forsberg, Joonas Korpisalo and even Oscar Dansk (didn’t mean to start this like a Christmas carol but hey, ’tis the season). But the goalie prospect that’s the unknown of the bunch is 20-year-old Latvian Elvis Merzlikins.
Why focus on him in a post? Ever since mid-October, Elvis has started every game for the Panthers. Yes, for the last 18 games Elvis has played almost every minute of every game going 13-5 with a .935 save percentage a 2.47 GAA and one shutout.
The shutout was against Lausanne HC and was the win that started the streak of starts.
Oddly enough, three games into the streak, and after his only back to back losses of the streak, Lugano fired its head coach.
Since then, Elvis has gone 12-3.
Elvis seems to get better the more rubber he faces. He’s posted a record of 13-5-2-1 when he faces 30 or more shots and that includes going 6-2-0-1 when he faced 40 or more shots. There were seven games that crossed the 40+ shot count during his streak. Throughout the run, Elvis’ save percent for the season has only dipped under .925 once.
For a quick take on Elvis’s streak here’s friend of the blog Maurizio Urich with some thoughts:
“he gives the team every night a chance to win, and since November, he’s always on the top of his game on the crunch time, see the 4 penalty shots stopped against Gotteron. Mentally he’s much stronger but physically too, he can play on Friday, Saturday and Tuesday and he still delivers the stuff (sic). He’s still celebrating the victories with the home crowd but he doesn’t get too much exited about it, two games left before the break then he’ll play the Spengler Cup in Davos. He knows that the real test for him will be the playoffs.”
This is the year the CBJ must make a decision on Elvis as to whether they’ll sign him or not and hopefully this stretch can help him earn a deal.
An article came out during development camp that Elvis could be signed and loaned back to Lugano next year, and that could become the most probable scenario as the Monsters and Jackets creases are likely to be full next year with Bob, CMac, Joonas and Anton filling the net.
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