BINNINGTON CAME OUT OF THE BLUE
Can Stanley Cup-winning goaltender ever repeat his one-of-a-kind storybook season?
There are goaltenders scattered all over the minor leagues believing they are just a phone call away, one grand opportunity from being a National Hockey League stalwart.
All because Jordan Binnington did it.
Binnington managed it against all odds and with almost no expectation. He did it after parts of six seasons bouncing around with five teams in two leagues that weren’t the NHL. He did it with a St. Louis team that was flailing on the ropes, its season wobbling away. What he did was almost impossible and certainly improbable.
That’s the Binnington story. Or maybe that was the Binnington story.
He has that unlikely Stanley Cup ring now, something his hero Curtis Joseph never attained.
Binnington grew up in Richmond Hill, Ont., playing most of his minor hockey at the highest level for the Vaughan Kings. The Leafs were his team. Joseph was his idol. He even got to share goaltending duties in minor hockey with Joseph’s nephew, getting to meet Cujo, getting to know him a little.
Now Binnington’s a goalie somebody might be looking at circumstantially and say: Why not me? What about my chances?
“It’s pretty real, right now,” said Binnington on the morning of his first career start at Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena.
He’s a goalie who talks on game day. That’s reasonably unusual with today’s over-managed NHL millennials. He’s more pragmatic about where he is and what he has accomplished than he is dreamy.
This is just the start of a long time in the NHL, he believes: This is no one-trick pony.
He has never played here with his mom watching; she lives just 20 minutes from the arena. He used to come to games with his dad, once or twice a year, when this place was called the Air Canada Centre.
He wasn’t the kid who would walk into the rink and proclaim one day he’ll be playing for the Leafs or in those nets. That wasn’t the way he approached hockey. He just wanted to play and keep playing and keep getting better and then who knows what might happen?
What happened was the Blues’ season was going down in flames. General manager Doug Armstrong, one of the best in the business, was getting pressure to blow up his team. The calls from around the league were coming in daily and way too often. He liked the roster he put together. He thought it was a contender.
But as former NFL coach Bill Parcells used to say, you are what the standings say you are. The Blues were last in the NHL when they called the 25-year-old up from San Antonio.
“That’s when everything changed,” said Ryan O’Reilly, the Conn Smythe Trophy winner.
“He got here and we started winning. It was like he grabbed us and pulled us along. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
They needed him; he needed them. It was perfect in a way hockey is rarely perfect.
In different ways, this has happened before: Ken Dryden was in his third week with the Montreal Canadiens in 1971 when he began his assault on the Stanley Cup and knocked off the famed Boston Bruins team with Phil Esposito and Bobby Orr.
It happened for Patrick Roy in 1986. He took over Montreal goaltending duties from Steve Penney and led the Canadiens to an unlikely Stanley Cup. The Habs had just 87 points that year, a tiny amount for a Montreal team with barely an all-star to be found on the roster.
Dryden went on to win six Stanley Cups. Roy won only four, two in Montreal. Binnington has one and two weeks into his first full NHL season, there are still many wondering about who he will become.
Maybe he can be a late-blooming all-time great. Terrific goalies such as Dominik Hasek and Ed Belfour won just one Cup. Tony Esposito won a Cup in Montreal as the backup to the backup, but nothing as a starter in Chicago.
Every once in a while, a goalie appears and then disappears, just like that. Jim Carey won a Vezina Trophy. Roman Cechmanek had a moment or two in the sun. Daren Puppa and Bob Froese were once second-team all-stars. But none of those four won a Cup first time around.
Binnington was 16-10 in the playoffs last spring, with a 2.46 goals-against average and the remarkable ability to bounce back after a challenging defeat. That came after he had a stellar first NHL regular season: He was 24-5 with a 1.89 goals-against average and a .927 save percentage. The star who came from nowhere, if nowhere means Richmond Hill. There is now a sign as you enter the town: Richmond Hill, home of Jordan Binnington.
“This is a tough league,” said Binnington, every bit the realist. “Tough to get here. Tough to stay here.”
He got here and we started winning. It was like he grabbed us and pulled us along. I’ve never seen anything like it before.