Miska an artist with glove — and brush
There’s little wonder Penticton Vees goalie is good; his dad is the Michelangelo of masks
Hunter Miska truly is a goalie artist.
The Penticton Vees rookie puck stopper from Stacy, Minn., is the son of Todd Miska, a Michelangelo of masks. He’s painted the goalie headgear for the likes of Ed Belfour, Miikka Kiprusoff, Josh Harding, Niklas Backstrom and Evgeni Nabokov, among others.
Father gave son a test run in the family business this fall, letting him do the painting for his own Penticton mask. Young Miska neatly meshed his new team and his roots, putting Vees logos on the sides as well as his No. 35 in USA colours on the chin and Minnesota Wild inspired stars on the forehead.
The back features ribbons, a tribute to team pastor Jamie Weberg, who is battling cancer. Miska likes to have an inspirational quote on his mask and this time used the top for words from Eleanor Roosevelt: “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
“Before, he would never let me touch his tools,” said Miska, 18, of his father, the man behind miskadesigns.com. “I think it turned out pretty well.
“My dad touched up some of the little mistakes I did. I couldn’t do everything perfect.”
Considering all that, you’d might think that Miska had been a goalie his entire life, that his first two words were “five hole” and he learned to butterfly before he learned to walk. Sorry. It didn’t happen that way. Miska only took to the crease fulltime four years ago. His mom, Sabina, always balked at him going in net. She felt he was better suited playing forward. Finally, he talked her into letting it happen.
After two years playing goal in high school hockey, he was picked up by the USA Hockey national development team program and spent the past two seasons with them, based out of Ann Arbor, Mich.
The Vees, one of the BCHL’s benchmark teams, remain in the hunt for the league’s Interior Division crown going into this the final weekend of the regular season, and Miska’s been a massive contributor.
As of Wednesday morning, he had the second best goals-against average in the BCHL (2.27) and the seventh-best save percentage (.914), to go with an 18-12-2 record. He’s already committed to the University of Minnesota Duluth, with his freshman season pencilled in for 201516 currently. The Vees have regularly recruited top talent from Minnesota, thanks to the connections coach and general manager Fred Harbinson made when he was coaching in the state as an assistant at St. Cloud State University.
“I went to meet with him and his dad and asked about his background prior to the national development team,” Harbinson said of Miska, “and when he told me that he had only started when he was 14 I thought he was joking.”
Miska did have proof that success with a late start was possible.
Harding began playing goal when he was 14. Not long before Miska began this run in net, he heard that tale from Harding over dinner.
He had tagged along with his dad for what was supposed to be a meeting regarding masks.
“As soon as he told me that, I said, ‘I’m going to do that,’ ” explained the 6-foot-1, 170-pound Miska. “I’m trying to follow in his footsteps.”
For the time being, his footsteps are sharing spots in the Penticton crease with Oliver Mantha, 21, a goalie from La Tuque, Que.
Harbinson has been rotating them all season. Mantha has a 16-9-0 record, to go with a 2.32 goals against and a .911 save percentage.
Harbinson says he’s not sure who’ll he turn to with when the playoffs start on Tuesday.
Better still, he’s not ruling out rotating in the postseason.
“Everyone keeps asking if I’ll go with one guy,” Harbinson said.
“As long as we’re being successful, why change? I’ve done it before. One year in the USHL I had two goalies play at different times during a playoff run. I just want to make sure that we’re stopping the puck.”