The struggles of one Andrew 'Razor' Raycroft this season have been well documented. A promising early stretch that included a great post-game interview after his 8th victory was derailed by a groin injury in November and the ambiguity of his position. However, in 2007 his performance has been on the upswing. Paul Maurice's confidence in the goaltender, he vowed to start him until the playoffs, seems to have given him the self-belief that too often seemed to be lacking at times during the dark days of November and December. At lunch yesterday, a friend was joking that he had really stepped up his game since the brow beating we gave Razor after the Canucks debacle (which cost us a pretty penny to go see as well as a night of trashtalk from the solitary Canucks fan that accompanied the three of us) and we should get some sort of reward for spurring Raycroft to greater heights.

Personally, I think that the change came when Maurice made it clear that he was going to be the starter the rest of the way. Starting with the December 30th game against the senators he has started every game for the Leafs. So I used December 29th to divide the season so far and compared the stats among goalies and compared their standing amongst their peers to their standing for the year-to-date. It's pretty basic but by looking at the tables you can see a few interesting tidbits. Note: Any goalies that are missing have either not played more than 5 games since December 29th or have not played enough games all year to be able to make a comparison.