Brian Elliott doesn’t have anything left to prove this season. He leads the league again in both save percentage (.938) and goals against average (1.69), and these stats helped him sign a two year contract extension with the Blues worth $3.6 million dollars.
In Ottawa, though, he might be a little motivated to show his former team’s fans a thing or two about what happens when you give up on a goaltender. Elliott began his NHL career in 2008-2009 with the Ottawa Senators and going 13-8-3-1 over 31 games played with the big club. He served as a back-up to Alex Auld, and bested the starer in wins. The Sens parted ways with Auld the next season, and relied on Elliott in 2009-2010 when Pascale Leclair suffered quite a few injuries. He again posted solid stats, though the next season the wheels fell off.
It would be unfair to blame the Senators’ 2010-2011 troubles on Elliott, seeing how the entire team was both terrile and decimated by injuries. By the time Elliott was traded to the Avalanche for Craig Anderson at last season’s trade deadline, the Sens were icing nearly all of the Binghamton Senators’ top players. He finished last season on an equally terrible Avalanche team, going just 2-8-1.
To be in the All-Star game this season is the last thing Elliott and Senators fans expected to happen. In a Q&A with the Post-Dispatch’s Jeremy Rutherford, he’s asked if he would do it all over again with the struggles if he’d wind up where he is right now. Here’s his answer:
“Do it again? I don’t know. Hindsight is 20/20. If this was the outcome, yeah probably I would have taken it. It’s a hard way to get here, that’s for sure. But this is pretty special for me and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”