Attending development camp allowed Keller to reconnect with Lehtola and Capitals goalie coach Scott Murray, who each kept in touch with him via text throughout last season. The Capitals also brought Ajoie goalie coach Vladimir Hiadlovsky to development camp so they could build a relationship with him and communicate with him this season.<\/p>\n
Keller is trying to follow Cristobal Huet, who played seven seasons in the NHL (2003-2010) with the Los Angeles Kings, Montreal Canadiens, Capitals and Chicago Blackhawks, and become the second goalie born in France to play in the League. The Dijon native knows he has a lot of work ahead, though, and needs to remain patient.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe last two years, playing pro hockey, seeing how it works and everything, I think it’s a big step as a player,\u201d he said. \u201cA lot of players don’t make it to pro hockey, so now I\u2019ve got to prove that I belong here and have a good season, add some consistency and see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
Keller also has a distant eye on potentially playing for France again when it hosts the Olympic Winter Games French Alps 2030. Maybe he\u2019ll get a chance to face McDavid on a breakaway again, either in the Olympics or, if he can make it, in the NHL.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s not sure how he\u2019d change his approach, though.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, it was just another player coming in,\u201d Keller said. \u201cI just tried to focus on how he skates, how he’s moving with his (stick) blade and everything with his stick and try to stop it. I guess it didn’t work, but I hope I’ll get another chance to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Attending development camp allowed Keller to reconnect with Lehtola and Capitals goalie coach Scott Murray, who each kept…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":822849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-822848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=822848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/822849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=822848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=822848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=822848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}