While he is in his second season of hockey at this level, after joining Springfield in the past off-season following starting his NAHL career off atWichita Falls, has started eight games in between the pipes in his first season here in Springfield and has won three and loss three starts along with two overtime losses as well. Leon has allowed just twenty goals total so far while he has a total of 263 shots fired on him. Realistically, quite impressive, ehhhh?
Following his first season in the NAHL last season, he finished up 13-13-2 in twenty-seven starts and had a total of thirty-one appearances. For a rookie goalie, in his first season at this level of play, he was actually a pretty impressive pickup from the day that head coach Tony Zasowki and the team picked Leon up to have him battle Kellenberger for the starting goalie spot. Against 828 shots fired against him in 2011-12, Leon allowed just eighty-one goals--good enough for a save-percentage of .91% and ended up with one shut out.
So far in this current season, as Leon is the starter to his back-up counterpart in Ryan Kellenberger after winning the preseason battle, he has an overall save percentage of .93 percent, and entering this weekends home games against the Janesville Jets, has won his last two starts overall with his last start being his second-career shut out, and first of this season, as he successfully blocked all twenty-nine Roadrunners' shots in the Junior Blues 2-to-0 win over Topeka on October 19th.
This seasons team is young--very young. In fact, as well as having a new coach and coaching staff in their first season in the North American Hockey League under Tony Zasowski and Mike Janda, this seasons team is actually one of the youngest teams in the entire hockey league--but under Zasowski, who won many state championships in Wisconsin at the 18U level, isn't surprising. One thing that is certainly still to be expected though, the team will still be good enough to win ball games.
He is the type of head coach that has a proven track record of getting the best out of all of his young talent--and if he can get that out of this teams youngsters' as well as the veterans on this team, once again the Junior Blues could be an opponents nightmare in a short five-game series if they could slip into a playoff spot yet again this season.
Despite the Junior Blues getting off to a rather slow start to the season, the team is starting to improve as they have won three out of their last four games--and bounced their way back up out of the bottom-feeder teams in the entire North American Hockey League.
While the team has a big weekend series against a division-rival in Janesville this weekend at home, Matt Leon has a big opportunity to turn some heads facing him and put the team back into the thick of things in the division race--assuming we can pick up 2-4 points in the two games.
Depending on how head coach Zasowki decides to play it this weekend and start Leon either just once or for both games against Janesville, will be an interesting setting. With Leon playing with Wichita Falls last season, he never faced the Jets; and he hasn't yet this season either--which will make this weekend his first career start against a team that has a nice offensive-attack led by fast-athletic forwards on both of the wings.
This weekend most definitely isn't a make-or-break weekend for Leon or even for the Junior Blues for the rest of the entire 2012-2013 regular season for that matter, but it certainly could go a long way in determining what direction this team is really heading in. With a team as young and inexperienced as this season's team, having a goalie such as the twenty-year old kid from Charlotte, North Carolina, Matt Leon, could make a huge difference--such as sitting at home in April or gearing up for the Robertson Cup championship.
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