Canada to find its net worth
There’s more than numbers in judging junior goalies
As Canada’s world junior championship selection camp was opening on Thursday in Toronto, Grant Sonier, the general manager of junior hockey’s Charlottetown Islanders, was telling a story from his days scouting for the L.A. Kings. The anecdote was apropos.
It happened more than a decade ago, when Sonier, then a scout with the Los Angeles Kings, was enamoured with a Western Hockey League goaltender named Carey Price.
There was, as we’ve all come to find out, a lot to like about Price. He was 6-foot-3 and athletic, and he played with a laid-back, straight-backed confidence that suggested a rare kind of unflappability that’s important at the highest level.
But there were plenty of negatives to be seen: For one, as a member of the notquite-elite Tri-City Americans, Price would end his NHL draft year with a record of 24-31-8. In a sport in which more than a few big thinkers ultimately judge goaltenders on their ability to win, Price, by the numbers, was a certifiable loser.
But Sonier remembers not being concerned about the wins and losses.
“I remember telling our Western scout: ‘I love this kid so much that I don’t care if he lets in a dozen goals,’ ” Sonier said.
On the night in question the Americans, in Price’s worst game of the season, let in nine. Price was in net for seven of them, this in less than 28 minutes of playing time — ugly enough for a goalsagainst-average of 15.12 on the evening.
But Sonier, it turned out, wasn’t alone in liking Price no matter the occasionally disastrous outing. Less than a year later Price was the fifth overall pick in the NHL draft. Not long after he’d be named tournament MVP as Canada won gold at a memorable world junior championship in Sweden,
The moral of the story: Results in junior hockey don’t always equate to future performance at higher levels.
Maybe that’s a good way for fans to look at Canada’s goaltending situation at the world junior tournament that opens Boxing Day in Helsinki with Canada facing the United States. The situation is less than optimal because one of the two goaltenders originally invited to the Team Canada camp, New Jersey Devils pick Mackenzie Blackwood of the Barrie Colts, made the not-so-intelligent decision to lay a vicious goal-stick chop to the shoulder of an opponent last week, earning a match penalty and an eightgame suspension by the Ontario Hockey League that will keep him out of Canada’s opening two games of the tournament, against the U.S. and Denmark.
“It was a little out of character. It’s in the past. I’m not thinking about that any more,” Blackwood told reporters after Thursday’s workout at the MasterCard Centre. “It was a chippy game. Things like that frustrate a player. It’s in my own control to stay composed. It was my own fault.”
The other goaltender on Canada’s original selection camp roster, Calgary draft pick Mason McDonald, plays for Sonier’s Islanders. Florida Panthers pick Samuel Montembeault was added to the roster after Blackwood was suspended.
And certainly you can build a case that neither McDonald nor Montembeault look particularly ready for this moment. Montembeault has a 7-10-4 record and an .886 save percentage for the Quebec league’s Blainville-Boisbriand Armada. McDonald is 7-10-2 with an unsightly save percentage of .893 for the Islanders.
But as Sonier was saying on Thursday — numbers that don’t always speak to a junior goaltender’s bigmoment acumen.
“I told Mason, ‘Don’t worry about your numbers, or your win-loss record, with us,’” Sonier said. “I’ve got compelling reasons why we haven’t won as much. Mason has done everything we’ve asked him to do . . .
“Goaltenders can have the ability, and their results can have a lot to do with what’s going on in front of them.’
One of those reasons is getting the short shrift in Pittsburgh. Daniel Sprong, the Islanders star who was kept by the Penguins out of training camp and has since withered from disuse by Pittsburgh coach Mike Johnston, could certainly be doing a lot for Charlottetown’s win-loss record.
Sprong scored 39 goals in 68 games in Charlottetown last year.
But such is the reality of junior hockey’s cyclical churn.
And such is the reality of the world junior moment.
No matter how well or poorly a player’s regular season is going, the tournament that provides this country with its holiday-season diversion is an opportunity to transcend it. That’s what McDonald will be trying to do for Canada in Finland later this month.
McDonald, for his part, has plenty of international experience; he was named the best goaltender at the under-18 worlds a couple of years ago.
And as much as there’ve been alarm bells sounded about the sad state of Canada’s goaltending development model — in the 2015 NHL draft, for instance, there were 24 netminders selected, and only four were Canadian — McDonald is an exception to that trend.
He was the first goaltender of any nationality selected in the 2014 NHL draft, 34th overall by the Flames, and he was the first Canadian by a longshot.
Another 12 goaltenders from six different countries were picked before a countryman of McDonald’s found an NHL home that year.
That alone won’t inspire a nation’s confidence later this month.
And therein lies another stark reality of the holiday pressure test through which this country’s best hockey-playing teenagers must pass.
If you’re the young man charged with manning the national crease, only a tournament-opening win — not to mention a tournament-capping gold medal — is likely to create true believers in your potential as a future great.