DiPietro stays calm under pressure at world juniors
Michael DiPietro seems more and more at ease as the pressure escalates at the 2019 world junior championships.
It’s counterintuitive, but there was DiPietro, Team Canada’s starting goaltender, talking to the assembled media on Tuesday in the bowels of Rogers Arena about an upcoming game and it would have been easy to assume he was previewing a run-of-the-mill contest by his easygoing, upbeat demeanour.
But he was speaking about today’s quarterfinal matchup with the Finns, which Canada is far from a surefire lock to win
DiPietro is Canada’s starting netminder. That is its own stress test, especially with the way Canadians value this tournament. He is also a Vancouver Canucks prospect, meaning he is playing in the world juniors in the rink that he’s slated to be based in as an NHLer. That, you would think, would ratchet up the heat even more.
There have been no signs of that from DiPietro, though.
“He’s our rock back there,” Canadian winger Jaret AndersonDolan said while watching the DiPietro scrum from a few feet away. “He’s always calm in highpressure situations.”
This isn’t one of those Canadian teams that’s an automatic to win gold. It’s not one of those years. The consensus has been all along that there are three or four teams capable of taking it all, and the Finns have been in that mix. They beat Canada 5-2 in an exhibition game on Dec. 23 at Rogers Arena.
Anderson-Dolan doesn’t want people getting too caught up in that pre-tournament loss.
“We are a different team than we were,” Anderson-Dolan said.
Canada will need another strong showing from DiPietro just to get to the final four of this tournament. DiPietro has stopped 66 of 69 shots (.957 save percentage) in three games. He was arguably Canada’s best player in a 2-1 loss to the Russians in the final preliminary round game on New Year’s Eve, turning away 29 shots.
He is a guy who has won in pressure situations before. He helped the Windsor Spitfires capture the 2017 Memorial Cup. They hosted that tournament, so there was an expectation there, too, albeit not at the same level as the world juniors.
A few weeks after that tournament he was picked in the third round, 64th overall, by the Canucks. “It was one of the those things where you tried to go with the flow and each game posed a new adversity or new challenge,” the six-foot, 205-pound DiPietro said Tuesday of the Memorial Cup.
He has worked on getting his mind where he wants it to be with Ryan Hamilton, Canada’s mental performance consultant. It was after talking with Hamilton that DiPietro opted to put a couple of handwritten notes to himself on the inside of his blocker.
“Take things one puck at a time, and then ABC: Be Aware, Breathe, Choose,” DiPietro told nhl.com’s Kevin Woodley.
He does admit that playing in Rogers Arena is “special.” When he might be based at the rink as an NHLer is open to speculation. Vancouver’s netminding depth chart also features 23-year-old Thatcher Demko, and the 2014 second rounder is in his third year in the minors.
DiPietro was traded by the Spitfires to the Ottawa 67’s last month. He could still return to junior next season, although it’s more than likely that the Canucks will want him to play in the minors as a 20-year-old.