Jan Laco has always turned heads, but only really turned masses when he made a name for himself at the Sochi Olympics; being picked over, at the time, Montreal Canadiens goalie Peter Budaj and getting the call in net.
At the time, Corey Masisak wrote an article called “Slovakia’s Laco no longer an unknown,” about how cut off from north America this brilliant talent of a goaltender was. This was repeated again at the world juniors on the back of a young junior named Denis Godla when he stole the limelight. But a year later and Laco has vanished, deciding to stay in Astana after looking into the KHL and NHL and continue to be the best, unheard of goaltender quietly working away.
Yet, how come his name has already been forgotten on North American shores? With Godla taking a stand in the World Juniors, the Slovak goalie scene is rife with talent, but they are buried and quiet. It’s unlikely Laco will ever reach the dizzying heights of the NHL, which is sad because he is easily one of the best European goalies about, and has been consistent.
We shall start with the season that has just passed, where Laco managed to take the crown in the playoffs for highest save percentage but also one other small thing. He was the highest ranked playoff goaltender to face the most shots and 5th overall in the league for shots thrown at him. We can break this down further and compare him to other payoff goalies to see the sheer volume of rubber Laco has seen. Included in this list, is Mikko Koskinen, who picked up the KHL award for best goaltender. While Koskinen had played seven more games, Laco had still faced more shots and completely blows the competition away in the shots per 60 column.
Laco’s, whilst still being in the top quarter of goaltenders, faced a heck of a lot of shots and just managed to keep up with those wealthier, far better teams. Compared to some of the other goaltenders from great teams, Barys stands out as being not as strong as the two army teams or coming close to Finnish newcomer Jokerit. Laco is buried under the big names but remains one of the heavy work-load players with a strong save percentage as well. But it’s not until the playoffs, when the sample sizes are smaller but closer, that we can see how much work Laco had to do in just one series.
Finishing with the highest SV%, and taking a high number of shots despite playing the fewest games, only Alexander Salak comes close in SV%. One could argue that because Laco played the fewest games it may not mean much. But we can even compare him to Henrik Karlsson, who, in the first round of five games with Minsk, was similar in average shots per game, and it was not until the sweep by CSKA that Karlsson began to take over 40 shots and begin to catch up with, and overtake, Laco’s totals. We can compare Laco to the goalie on the other end, Kevin Lalade, despite going all the way to Game 7 with SKA in that historic collapse. In fact, it wasn’t until the third game that CSKA and Lalade began to, for the first time in the playoffs, start being heavily outshot, with Game 4 ending up with SKA outshooting CSKA almost 2-1. There’s been very few other goalies that have managed to constantly sustain high numbers of shots against like Laco and not fall apart. We can pinch some numbers from his table at Elite Prospects, where you can see his KHL stats are now improving and can only get better. But the stellar performance at the Olympics that shot his name into the limelight wasn’t actually the start of something.
While he struggled as a backup to start, he eventually evened out and stayed above average for the KHL , even taking over the starting reigns instead of being a backup. He’s only managed to improve despite being dropped to a lesser team, from Donbass to Barys. His international numbers might not look the best, but Slovakia has been depleted for a while. This wasn’t stopping him, as he was one of the main reasons why Slovakia don’t lie near the relegation line. Barys locking up Laco secures his starting role and he should continue being one of the most dominant goaltenders that hopefully shouldn’t just be remembered for the heroics of Sochi. From the junior Godla, to Laco , to veterans Jaroslav Halak and Budaj, Slovakian goaltending is a quiet force still ticking, still being dominant and should never quite be forgotten.
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