Sparks knows all about giving up bad goals
Website allows goaltenders to share experiences about ups and downs of position
Marlies goalie Garret Sparks has a pretty good idea of what Jonathan Bernier was going through Monday, battling with the anxiety of allowing a soft goal, and trying not to let it affect the rest of his game.
“I’ve let in ones that are worse than that,” Sparks said as the first-place Marlies worked out Monday while the rest of the local hockey world was looking at Bernier’s bad goal from about 100 feet out the night before in New York.
“There’s a great picture of me in my first year, and there’s red liquid exploding in the air over my head (after the puck hit his water bottle). A lot of guys are mentioning that picture all the time, and you want to forget it . . . but sometimes there’s a good reminder of what happened that makes you tougher mentally.”
That image rests in posts on the goalie website GGSU, something that is equally important to Sparks’ development as tough games and bad goals.
Sparks can smile about that exploding-bottle image now, but there is, literally, a greater picture behind the moment. Sparks, like Bernier, had to deal with the aspect of forgetting the bad goal; it’s a not-so-easy mental exercise that is also absolutely crucial to a goalie, if he hopes to regain the trust of his teammates and coaching staff.
Sparks now gives advice to goalies all over the world, on bad goals and other goaltending intricacies and secrets. It’s part of his involvement with the GGSU website, which now has 20,000 members worldwide, many of them goalies sharing experiences.
“I joined it when I was 15 and playing AAA hockey in Chicago,” Sparks said of the website. “I try to help keep it growing and, really, I just like it, I’ll tell anyone that. If I get a question, I’ll try my best to give the best advice I can. I’ve made some great friends through it.”
At 22, Sparks has graduated to the AHL on a hockey path that extended farther into the obscure corners of the sport than most. He began in his native Chicago with the Chicago Mission and Team Illinois programs, and it led to the Leafs drafting him 190th overall in 2011. Sparks then played three years with the Guelph Storm and joined the Marlies as a backup two years ago before falling backwards to Orlando of the ECHL. He was buried in the organizational depth chart behind Bernier, James Reimer, Antoine Bibeau and Christopher Gibson.
The problem was his body; Sparks loved eating sweets and junk food. But he erased those habits over the summer as part of a renewed training regimen that saw him shed 25 pounds. This season, he is among the AHL’s top goaltenders with 6-2-1 record, a .929 save percentage and a league player of the week award.
There’s also a wisdom beyond his years: Sparks and friend Adam Weersink have a goalie school with successful branches in Chicago and Los Angeles that will come to Toronto next summer.
The school is part of the GGSU website, an acronym Sparks says will remain a “myth.” He’s also drawn inspiration from good friend and GGSU member Mike Condon, who took his own, well publicized crisscrossed path to the Montreal Canadiens, and Scott Darling, who rose to the Chicago Blackhawks three years after overcoming a drinking problem and playing in the Southern Professional Hockey League with Mississippi.
Sparks, besides being at the keyboard when he’s posting to the GGSU website, is also decent at sketches and drawing. He designed the graphics on a new goalie mask he unveiled recently, one that pays homage to all the teams he’s been associated with, right down the men’s league team back in his native Chicago.
Sparks knows bad goals are part of hockey. He knows the worst part about it, the part that isn’t discussed openly, is the fact his teammates can get “mad at me” for the mistake. And like Bernier, Sparks knows the memory of those goals can’t be left to linger.
“I’ve been called out (by teammates) after letting in a bad goal, one part of being a goalie is accepting responsibility,” Sparks said.
“You face the music and you move on. You don’t forget them . . . but the best advice I can give is . . . you’re obviously not happy, but move on and make the next save, worrying is only going to compound the situation.”