One of the most underrated netminders over the last few years has decided to call it a day.
On Friday, Colorado Avalanche goaltender Pavel Francouz announced he is retiring from hockey at the age of 33.
Francouz has been dealing with injury troubles over the past year. An adductor surgery performed last offseason led to the Avalanche placing the Czech netminder on long-term injured reserve. The team eventually announced in November that he was not going to play in the 2023-24 season.
When speaking to the Czech media on Friday, Francouz revealed that he told the Avalanche prior to the preseason that he intended to retire after dealing with lower-body issues for most of his career. The Plzen native stated that he had grown sick of taking injections and pills just to play, which he had to do in order to play during much of the 2022-23 campaign.
Francouz explained that he knew from a young age that his career was going to be short, as he had surgeries on both of his knees when he was a teenager, citing a congenital knee disease.
Francouz burst onto the North American scene after a fruitful career in Europe. With Czech Extraliga club HC Litvínov, he was named the league’s top goaltender twice, and in 2014-15, he backstopped Litvinov to the league championship. In the Kontinental Hockey League with Traktor Chelyabinsk, he was named the goaltender of the year in the 2017-18 season.
The following offseason, the Avalanche signed him to a contract. Francouz shot up the depth chart, and stepped into the spotlight during the 2019-20 season, when Philipp Grubauer had injury woes. Francouz played quite a bit during that year’s playoffs, before getting injured himself during the second round.
That injury led to hip surgery that caused Francouz to miss the entire 2020-21 season. When he returned the following year, he proved to be a solid supporting character to Darcy Kuemper. However, when Kuemper was injured during the 2022 Playoffs, Francouz stepped up, going unbeaten in six games before Kuemper returned to help Colorado win the Stanley Cup.
In 73 NHL appearances, Francouz posted a 44-21-6 record with a 2.49 goals-against average, a .919 save percentage and four shutouts. In the playoffs, he played in 13 games, with a 3.01 GAA and a .899 SV%, with two shutouts.
Francouz told the media he had been helping the Avalanche with scouting goaltenders during the season, and expressed interest in continuing to do that in the future.
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