It’s been fairly smooth sailing for the Prince George Spruce Kings (3-1) at the National Junior A Championship.
With a chance to go to Sunday’s final game in Brooks, Alberta the success of the BCHL’s most northern franchise has been built from the goaltender out.
Despite only seeing 67 shots in the Spruce Kings first four games, Logan Neaton has shut the door when he’s needed to for the Fred Page and Doyle Cup champs posting a sparkling 0.91 goals against average and a .955 save percentage.
The eye-popping numbers also caught the attention of Hockey Canada who named Neaton the Top Goaltender of the NJAC.
This is pretty much an encore performance for the 20-year-old from Brighton, Michigan where the Spruce Kings went 16-1 in the BCHL’s Fred Page Cup playoffs holding a 1.46 GAA and a .940 SV PCT.
So how has Neaton been able to stay so sharp while seeing so few shots all while playing behind an elite defensive unit?
“I think the regular season prepared for me that just to understand that a lot of the games I will not see a lot of shots and that I just need to stay focused on the next shot and go from there.”
“At the end of the day our team is so structured and so defensively sound that you have to expect we’re going to keep shots low and keep the momentum and the shots that we do give up won’t be of high quality.”
Neaton is heading south of the border next season where he will be suiting up for the NCAA’s U-Mass Lowell River Hawks where he has already received some advice from his future team.
“There are games where I do get a good amount of rubber, especially with this Brooks team so it’s obviously a give and take but I have kept the same mentality that was instilled by my college coach and my goalie coach Al to keep the same mentality no matter what is happening in the game.”
Prince George plays it’s semi-final matchup today against the Oakville Blades at 6pm.
MYPGNOW’s Brendan Pawliw is providing extensive coverage of the National Junior A Championship.