STARTING FROM ZERO
Leafs rookie Garret Sparks, making his NHL debut, shuts out the Oilers and earns first-star honours.
G-G-G-Great balls of goaltending fire. Now, that twanged Toronto’s hockey G-spot. G: For goalie. For good golly. For Garret — Garret Sparks. Netminder No. 88 in the annals of the Maple Leafs. But the first ever to nail a shutout in his blueand-white NHL debut.
This is what hockey dreams are made of: The callup, the start, the envisioning that began in childhood unfolding in real life. Only even better, right Garret? “Uh, nah, it all went according to plan.” Deadpan, wry. But only minutes earlier, the 22-year-old had taken his turn in front of heralding Air Canada Centre crowd, as first star of the game. And when informed, along the boards, that he’d been the first Leaf goalie to pull off that rookie debut feat — blanking the Oilers 3-0 — Sparks burst into tears.
This is emotional stuff, people. Sweet, sweet stuff. Such a feel-good story amidst what has mostly been a painful 2015-16 campaign.
Frankly, Sparks looked stunned afterwards, slumped in his dressing room cubicle, making no move to start stripping off his gear.
“I don’t know,” he began, eyes glazing over. “I’m sure it’ll hit me at some point, it just hasn’t yet. I wish I had more for you. I don’t have a lot right now.”
There will never be another first in this category, the shutout distinction, so Sparks’ name has already found its way into the Leafs’ record book.
“They’ve been playing hockey here for a long time, so I think that’s pretty cool.”
Drained, the young man was; drained and overwhelmed and clueless about where the game puck had got to, but hopefully someone had put the thing aside. Sparks plans to send it to his parents, who were in the audience last night, dad videotaping the goalie crush at the buzzer, the first-star epilogue.
The game — won on a pair of goals by Leo Komarov, his second into an empty net, and another by Nazem Kadri — went by in a blur, said Sparks. But at least he saw the damn puck just fine.
“My process has always been to take it five minutes at a time, one period at a time, chip away at the game. After I came out of the first unscathed, I wanted to have a good second.”
Going into the third frame, that shutout — unaware of its record dimensions — was “definitely’’ on his mind, he admitted. “You just want to be on and make sure that, if they’re going to beat you, they have to really beat you.”
Coach Mike Babcock took a detached attitude, pleased of course but acting like he hadn’t felt the least bit twitchy about how this evening might have unfolded, planting Jonathan Bernier on the bench and going with a raw kid who was playing in the ECHL a year ago.
“Good for the kid. Life’s about opportunity and how you respond to that opportunity”’ said the boss. “Obviously, he must have some swagger about him, some confidence about him. He played well, we got a win.”
Here was the latest in a long line of masked men who’ve donned the post-up tools of engagement for the Maple Leafs — if not necessarily for a good time (more often a wretched time) but definitely a memorable time — Game 1, Win 1.
That’s one win more than Bernier has this season, FYI. A big MMMWAAH to the goalposts though, first the right and then the left — staunch stanchions, those double-clangs not counted among the 24 shots Sparks set aside, earning an escalating explosion of cheers from the crowd.
It couldn’t have gone any better, really, on an evening when the hockey deities smiled upon this long, cool glass of water from Illinois.
With James Reimer still on the mend from a lower body injury and Bernier a basket-case between the pipes —and between the ears — Babcock had tapped Sparks on the shoulder: HELP.
Mostly that speaks volumes about how low Bernier has sunk in the trust column, alongside that big fat zero in the win column. So the lean, lanky kid — a transformation from the fat, flabby specimen he’d been just six months ago — got his ta-da chance with Edmonton in town and Toronto in a goalie crisis.
Thought about it much, Garret was asked after the morning skate.
“Probably about a million times as a kid.’’
Sparks recalls where he’d been exactly a year earlier, Nov. 30, 2014, which didn’t look anything like the plush well-accoutered surroundings of the Leaf dressing room.
“On a bus somewhere in the eastern part of the United States, on a 30-day road trip. Thirty days, 12 games. You have a duffle bag and you don’t get to go home.’’
The Leafs employ people to do that — lug duffle bags. And the only time they travel on buses is to the airport.
So, though Sparks has been up with the club since last week and although he has otherwise been toiling just a few blocks away with the hot ’n’ lively Marlies, this has all been a jangly new experience.
At the very least, he filled a good chunk of the net last night. Sparks stands six-foot-two and weighs a slimmed down 200 pounds.
“I’ve been playing hockey for a long time. This is the coolest thing that’s come of it yet. So, very excited.”
In Sparks, the Leafs are getting a netminder with the best save percentage in the American Hockey League (.938), a 1.90 GAA and 8-2-1 record with the Marlies. What does that signify? Not much, because projecting minor-league stats to NHL potential is a mug’s game when it comes to goaltenders.
An incoming goalie, like a new coach, can indeed provide the, er, spark. The Leafs were just delighted with one solid performance in Reimer’s absence. Said James van Riemsdyk, tellingly: “When your goalie’s calm, that can affect the whole team.”
Only a few feet away from Sparks’ locker, on the perimeter of the morning scrum, Bernier sat alone, ignoring the media mob, and mostly being ignored in return.
He can’t figure it out either, what’s become of his game, his marbles. These have been the worst days of his hockey life.
“I can say that everything was pretty easy before this happened to me. I’m searching for answers, I guess. I know if you stick to it and work really hard — that’s part of life, right?”
Bernier asked, as if seeking reassurance: “It’s not like one day you’re good and one day you’re bad, right? Even if you’ve kind of lost your confidence a little bit. You’ve just got to stick to it and believe that you were a good goalie once. It’s not that it’s gone, right?”
Monday night, Bernier sat at the end of the bench, charting shots, documenting the upstart who might take his job. In the dressing room, that kid actually apologizes to reporters for his quote-choke.
“I’m lost right now. I’m sorry.”