Binnington: one-year wonder or is this goalie here to stay?

BLUES WERE IN LAST PLACE WHEN ROOKIE ARRIVED AND LED THEM TO STANLEY CUP

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 different teams in two different leagues that weren’t the NHL. He did it with a St. Louis Blues 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 the Binnington story.

He has that unlikely Stanley Cup ring now — that’s something his hero Curtis Joseph never attained. Binnington grew up in Richmond Hill, 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 in minor hockey with Joseph’s nephew: He got to meet Cujo, got 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 the 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’s accomplished than he is dreamy. This is Year 1 of a long time in the NHL, he believes: This is no one-trick pony.

He’s never played here before with his mom watching — she lives just 20 minutes from the awkward initials that are SBA. 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 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 that goaltending factory in 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 the Montreal goaltending 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 is still a question about what he will become. Maybe he can be a late blooming all-time great. Some terrific goalies such as Dominik Hasek and Ed Belfour won just one Cup apiece. 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 allstars. 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 before he had Steve Carlton numbers in his first NHL go-round: He was 24-5. Yep, twenty-four and five? With a 1.89 goals-against average, 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.”

THIS IS A TOUGH LEAGUE. TOUGH TO GET HERE. TOUGH TO STAY HERE.

PATRICK SMITH / GETTY IMAGES Blues goalie Jordan Binnington, who grew up near Toronto, was scheduled to play his first NHL game in that city Monday.