Player of Week 7: CJ Motte!

Photo: Scott Wiggins

Our Player of Week 7 is Coventry Blaze goalie CJ Motte!

The 29-year-old netminder stopped 56 of 57 shots in Cardiff on Saturday night and a further 43 of 44 at the Skydome as the Blaze recorded a four-point weekend with wins over the Devils and Dundee.

"We knew going into Cardiff that had to keep it simple, especially with the number of bodies we had," began Motte. "We played a smart game, and then when we had a guy ejected we basically had to take on a new perspective keep it even simpler!

"I have to give our guys a lot of credit, we ground it out. Janne (Kivilahti) scored two big ones to give us the go-ahead which was a big boost. From then on we played a simple game, chipping pucks out and deep, and ground it out."

Motte stopped 98.02% of the 101 shots he faced over the weekend in those two wins. "It's been a combination of things," explained the Blaze stopper. The guys are doing a good job keeping a lot of stuff to the outside, blocking shots, taking away any good lanes and that is really helpful for me. Then for me I'm working hard in practice, going in early to get extra goalie drills, and trying to get better every day."

Motte was part of the Blaze team that had an incredible run during the second half of the 2019/20 season before the pandemic cut things short. He returned to the team this summer after spending last season in North America. "I'm really enjoying being back here. Once I figured out that we had a good group of guys returning, it was really easy to come back," he said. "We had such a good run last time with this core group that we feel like there is unfinished business.

"At the start of the season there were some learning curves; we needed to figure out our system, and of course some guys had played last year and others hadn't so it took a bit of time getting back to game speed. But I think we're getting better each game and are hopefully going to continue getting results."