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Originally Posted by Pierre "Monster" McGuire
For those voting for Gillies over Ortio, I'm a little confused by that. Ortio has done more in his career so far and has shown no indication he can't be an NHL player. Oh well, it's a good problem to have either way.
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I'm a fan of Ortio's, so I won't bad mouth him, but I think Gillies' upside is higher. Ortio closed the gap last season, but I still have Gillies ahead.
The only reason Gillies' sophomore season could even be considered a disappointment is because his freshman year was so good. Overall, his stats were virtually identical from one year to the next. His save percentage was identical, and his GAA went up so slightly that the difference is one goal over 12.5 games. He won 2 more games and lost 3 fewer as a sophomore than as a freshman.
Gillies has started pretty much every game Providence has played over the last two seasons. Other than when he was at the World Juniors, I think there has only been one game each season where the backup started.
Unlike a forward or defenceman, who can have their roles greatly change over the course of a four-year college career, once a goalie is his team's starter, there isn't anywhere for him to progress higher. While it would be nice to see his stats improve from year-to-year, there's also a limit to how much improvement is even possible. He stopped 93 out of every 100 shots he faced as a freshman, just repeating that as a sophomore is pretty impressive.
Ryan Miller is arguably the best goalie to come out of the NCAA. His stats declined from his second to third years at college. Of course, his third year stats were still phenomenal.
Even when he was struggling last season, Gillies still had pretty good numbers. He only allowed 4 goals 5 times all season, and only allowed more than 4 twice -- and one of those was Gaudreau putting up a 4-point game.
By the end of the season, he had overcome whatever problems he was struggling with after the World Juniors, and put together four straight wins to end the season and get the third seed in Hockey East for Providence. He shut out the higher-ranked Quinnipiac in the first round of the NCAA tournament, and lost the second round to the eventual champions. In the loss, he was the only goalie in the NCAA tournament who held Union to fewer than 5 goals.
One last thing to remember about Gillies is that he was putting up his numbers as an 18 year-old NCAA freshman, which is pretty uncommon. Miller and Quick were both 19 year-old freshmen, and neither of them started as many games as freshmen as Gillies has in either of his two seasons.