Jared Coreau spoke with the Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan regarding his call-up and the disappointment he overcame after being demoted to Grand Rapids at the start of the season:
“At the start of the year, I’ll admit it, I was a little down not making the team,” said Coreau, who was promoted to the NHL earlier in the week when Petr Mrazek was traded to Philadelphia. “It’s natural. I’m a competitor and felt like I had lost, you could say.
“But you have to suck it up and come ready to play. You work for it all summer, you work countless hours, days, weeks and months, and sometimes it just doesn’t work out. But you have to keep working and at the end of the day, no one is going to be mad at you for not succeeding but they might be bad at you for not succeeding and then giving up. I would be mad at myself.”
Coreau spent part of last season with the Red Wings (5-4-3, 3.46 GAA, .887 SVS) when Jimmy Howard injured his knee, but starred in the spring when he helped lead Grand Rapids to the Calder Cup championship.
Coreau felt he’d done enough to land an NHL job, but with Howard and Mrazek both on the Red Wings’ roster, there wasn’t any room for a third goalie. Coreau cleared waivers, and found himself back with the Griffins, where he and the team didn’t get off to rousing starts.
“I was one game below .500, 7-8-2, at one point so I said to myself, ‘You have to get it going’,” said Coreau, 25, who has been part of the Red Wings’ organization since 2013. “If the opportunity does come, I want the Red Wings to believe in me that I do have the ability to play at this level, so I have to prove it in the AHL. That brought more intensity in the game and it paid off.”
Coreau was 20-10-4, with a 2.47 goals-against average and .916 save percentage in Grand Rapids this season.
