{"id":28334,"date":"2018-05-03T23:20:00","date_gmt":"2018-05-04T03:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/?p=28334"},"modified":"2018-05-03T23:20:00","modified_gmt":"2018-05-04T03:20:00","slug":"avalanche-sign-goaltender-pavel-francouz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2018\/05\/03\/avalanche-sign-goaltender-pavel-francouz\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado Avalanche Sign Goaltender Pavel Francouz"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/avalanche\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Colorado Avalanche<\/a> announced\u00a0on Wednesday that the team had signed Czech Republic-born goaltender\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.eliteprospects.com\/player\/18084\/pavel-francouz\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Pavel Francouz<\/a> to an\u00a0entry-level $690,000 contract for the 2018-19 season.<\/p>\n<h3>One-Way Deal<\/h3>\n<p>By inking a one-way NHL deal with\u00a0goaltender Pavel Francouz, the Colorado Avalanche have found a much-needed backup for\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/v\/varlasi01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Semyon Varlamov<\/a>. The starting goalie of\u00a0the team suffered a knee injury at the end of the season 2017-2018.<\/p>\n<p>Does that mean that the club may not re-sign\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/b\/bernijo01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jonathan Bernier<\/a>\u00a0( $2.75 million this season) or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/h\/hammoan01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Andrew Hammond<\/a> ($1.35 million)? There is not much time left before that situation will be resolved. Both of them are eligible to\u00a0an unrestricted free agency on July 1, 2018.<\/p>\n<p>It is worth mentioning that in 2015, Francouz injured his ankle. He had to be stretchered off during a match against Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod in the KHL. The Czech goalie was troubled by the injury throughout the rest of the 2015-16 season. Nevertheless, in the following seasons and playoffs, Francouz showed an excellent\u00a0physical\u00a0form and even participated at the KHL All-Star Game in 2016-17.<\/p>\n<p>From that viewpoint, should\u00a0Colorado Avalanche decide to keep one of\u00a0the above mentioned unrestricted free agents, there shouldn&#8217;t be a problem to reassign the newly acquired goalie to the American Hockey League, as he is a\u00a0first-year\u00a0waiver-exempt professional in the NHL.<\/p>\n<h4>Great KHL Record<\/h4>\n<p>Before the signing with Avs, Francouz played for Traktor Chelyabinsk of the Kontinental Hockey League in Russia. Records\u00a0show he has been one of the most consistently strong goaltenders in the KHL for the last three seasons. This year, Francouz went 15-11-5 with a 1.80 goals-against average, having\u00a0five shutouts under\u00a0his belt.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Pavel Francouz tremendous pad save on Bryukvin\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/88YoLYPfycA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h4>International Performance<\/h4>\n<p>This month, Pavel Francouz will represent the Czech Republic at the 2018 IIHF World Championship in Denmark. That will be his fifth\u00a0annual tournament.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier\u00a0this year, the 6-foot-1, 179-pound goaltender represented the Czech Republic at the Pyeong Chang Olympics finishing 2-2 with a 2.27 goals-against average and a .905 save percentage.<\/p>\n<p>Main Image Credit:<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color: #fff; display: inline-block; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; color: #a7a7a7; font-size: 11px; width: 100%; max-width: 594px;\">\n<div style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; text-align: left;\"><a style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/923247382\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; position: relative; height: 0; padding: 66.66667% 0 0 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"display: inline-block; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; margin: 0;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/923247382?et=kRBssvuaRrVy8WQBxxTQhg&amp;tld=com&amp;sig=t0WtOfY17qC9WiP16C-NUy_9yLzFrWFv6gpF2RUBjXI=&amp;caption=true&amp;ver=1\" width=\"594\" height=\"396\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Colorado Avalanche announced\u00a0on Wednesday that the team had signed Czech Republic-born goaltender\u00a0Pavel Francouz to an\u00a0entry-level $690,000 contract for the 2018-19 season. One-Way Deal By inking a one-way NHL deal with\u00a0goaltender Pavel Francouz, the Colorado Avalanche have found a much-needed backup for\u00a0Semyon Varlamov. The starting goalie of\u00a0the team suffered a knee injury at the end [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2459,"featured_media":28369,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"1","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28,34],"tags":[36,37,38,955,3276],"class_list":["post-28334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-avalanche","category-news","tag-colorado-avalanche","tag-hockey","tag-nhl","tag-nhl-news","tag-pavel-francouz"],"modified_by":"Tyger Allen, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2459"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}