Tue, April 19, 2005
Jason LaBarbera finished second in the AHL only to teammate Steve Valiquette with a 1.84 goals-against average.
Even with the amount of hardware that Jason LaBarbera took home last season, he again is the AHL's poster child for development this season.
The Les Cunningham Award winner for the 2003-04 season as the AHL's most valuable player, the 2003-04 Baz Bastien Memorial Trophy winner for best goaltender and a First Team AHL All-Star last season, LaBarbera could have retreated back home to British Columbia last summer and returned this season to pick up where he left off in the 2004 Calder Cup playoffs.
Chances are that he would have put together another top-level season that would have put him in the mix for another shot at the Bastien Trophy.
Instead LaBarbera, once a project with a lot of raw ability who has now become a prospect, returned this season and completely overhauled the same style of play that earned him all that hardware last season.
Chicago's Kari Lehtonen is a premier AHL prospect, and Ryan Miller in Rochester has backstopped the Amerks to the sort of season that had them flirting with several AHL records when March rolled around.
But LaBarbera's name certainly belongs in any discussion as to who is the AHL's top goaltender, and a very strong case could be made for the 25-year-old, even if he is not the most-heralded name in AHL circles.
For that matter, so does LaBarbera's goaltending partner, Steve Valiquette, who has long been a solid AHL goalie and has now moved up into the AHL's top netminding echelon.
The LaBarbera-Valiquette pairing carried the Wolf Pack to a Game 7 Eastern Conference final overtime thriller against Wilkes-Barre/Scranton that the Penguins eventually won.
That pairing returned to Hartford for another go this season, and form the AHL's best one-two tandem.
LaBarbera, a workhorse who played 53 games, went 31-16-2 with a 1.84 goals-against average and six shutouts in 2004-05. Valiquette put together a spectacular season as well, going 19-11-1 to go with his 1.77 GAA and seven shutouts.
The pair won the Harry "Hap" Holmes Award for allowing the fewest goals in the AHL this season.
The man overseeing the duo is Benoit Allaire, a goaltending guru in QMJHL circles in the 1990s who then moved on to the Montreal Canadiens and Phoenix Coyotes organizations. His students include notable AHL alumni like Nikolai Khabibulin, Brian Boucher, Jose Theodore, Jean-Sebastien Giguere, Sebastien Caron and Mathieu Garon, who has anchored the Manchester Monarchs in net all season.
Those Allaire disciples come in a variety of shapes, sizes and styles, but Allaire's specialty is big goaltenders.
"I'm a fan of the big goalies," the affable Allaire said. "For sure, if (two guys have) the same skills, the bigger guy is going to have more of an advantage than the smaller guy."
Steve Valiquette registered seven of Hartford's 13 shutouts during the 2004-05 season.
Certainly the physical attributes that LaBarbera (a sturdy 6-3, 230) and Valiquette (a more lanky 6-6, 217) possess are to Allaire's liking.
LaBarbera-Valliquette brings a lot of similar qualities to Allaire's canvas. Big goaltenders who use their size well, the two are both students of the game who bring easygoing dispositions to a Hartford dressing room, where both are very well-liked and respected.
One of the AHL's most pleasant personalities, LaBarbera can talk all day, and Valiquette is a very chatty sort as well. Just as importantly, the two netminders are goaltending junkies who pick apart the position's nuances and came into their Allaire partnership with eyes and ears open.
Having Allaire around this season has been been to the goaltenders' liking. Valiquette is rumored to be such a student of the position that he has video of every game that he has ever played, and LaBarbera has taken up Valiquette's video bug this season as well.
Clearly Allaire had quite a bit to work with this season, and he went to work in making modifications to the goaltending styles that LaBarbera and Valiquette had employed, so much so that the two goaltenders now play very similar styles.
That style is centered around the the goaltenders' key attribute -- LaBarbera and Valiquette are two of the AHL's biggest goalies -- and is predicated upon working with that size asset.
"I don't work with their weaknesses too much," Allaire explained. "I work with their strengths, what they've got, and try to develop those (strengths). I don't try to change their style too much."
Their numbers aside, both goalies had been critiqued in the past for questionable mobility. Scouts wondered about LaBarbera's lateral mobility and questioned Valiquette's reflexes.
Allaire has encouraged the two to play deeper in net, a marked difference from the North American mindset that encourages goaltenders to challenge shooters.
Given the goaltenders' size, doing so means having less net to cover. When opposing shooters bear down on the Hartford net and see goalies of that size, their shooting options become decidely more limited.
The two have also worked on keeping loose pucks in front of them. Assistant coach Nick Fotiu has implemented a "safety-guy" system that relies on a Hartford forward to collapse into the slot and clean up loose rebounds and contain the opposition's down-low pressure.
LaBarbera has improved his lateral mobility this season by using stronger t-pushes that have improved his post-to-post movement and given him the extra split-second needed at the AHL level.
The NHL lockout means Allaire has been able to spend more time in Hartford.
"Benoit Allaire has been a blessing this season," Valiquette said. "He has been unbelievable. Jason and I have made a lot of changes and really benefited from working with him this season. It's been a positive."
LaBarbera concurs, saying "He's very detailed. I had never watched tapes of myself before. He's one of the hardest-working coaches that I've seen. He enjoys it, and it makes it fun coming to the rink."
The extra time together has allowed Allaire to dive into his work with his two Hartford netminders.
"It's a chance to have two great goalies work with me," Allaire said. "It's pretty good timing to get there and work with those guys. What I try to do is try to create consistency with the goalies, to (play) the same (way) is the most important thing for goalies."
"The game is so fast. What we try to do is just to do our job. If (the opposition) gets 10, 20, 25 scoring chances, it doesn't matter. You have to stop the puck. If you want to stay in the game, you have to stop the puck."
