Goalie’s passions: Leather, glove
Collin Delia, son of a woodworker who was the son of a stonemason, finds common ground between leather-making and goaltending
When Collin Delia isn’t between the pipes, he’s probably working on his other trade: making anything he can get from his favorite material.
“You get in this existential space and you’re so zoned in. Everything else just kind of fades away. And that’s how it is in goaltending too.”
— Collin Delia on the similarities between craft and sport
Enter Collin Delia’s apartment and you immediately see sheets of leather covering an unfinished couch he’s building by hand.
There’s more leather spread out on the island in his kitchen that one day may be turned into belts or tote bags. Upstairs in his loft work space he has finished wallets and backpacks made of — you guessed it — leather.
If you hadn’t guessed, Delia is into leather-making. He’s also into goaltending, as Blackhawks fans have discovered since he was called up from Rockford last month. The 24-year-old rookie craves the attention to detail required to make leather goods and sees a clear parallel to the art of playing goalie.
When Delia is working on his couch or creating a wallet for a friend, he’ll work for hours only to discover the day has flown by and he has forgotten to eat.
“I’ve learned that I can’t do leather work on game days,” Delia said. “It’s a passion. You get in this existential space and you’re so zoned in. Everything else just kind of fades away. And that’s how it is in goaltending too. You’re only worried about the puck. Everything else — the crowd, the other nuances — they kind of have sensory deprivation. I love that flow state that you’re in.
“As a goalie, that’s something I always chase. To have that feeling of, man, I can’t even remember half the game or three-fourths of the game because I was so engaged. And time just flies by.”
While Delia has flat screen TV on the wall of his apartment, he doesn’t have cable. He does, however, have a steel hammer he calls “The Enforcer” that he uses to make leather goods. He hopes one day to turn the hobby into a business.
Cable TV is far too distracting, he says, and he’s very careful about what he lets inside his head. Instead of listening to talking heads on a news program or letting TV ads bombard him, Delia puts on a “TED Talk” podcast and immerses himself in positive messages while he builds.
“I always stand on guard to my mind, what I let in,” said Delia, who has been writing journals since he was 16. “The information that’s being received, we’re just recording devices with our eyes and our ears. We’re hearing things, seeing things subliminally and we’re not even paying attention subconsciously.”
Delia didn’t take up leathermaking until November 2017, but he has had a lifelong interest in building things, which he developed from his father and grandfather. His grandfather was a stonemason and his father, Nick, a fireman in Southern California, is a woodworker.
“Somewhere it’s in my blood,” Delia said. “(My grandfather) had his thing and my dad has his thing and now I have my thing.”
Delia was a civil engineering major at Merrimack College in Massachusetts and has the ability to sketch a design of what he wants to make quickly. The couch he’s building is the product of many conversations with his father, who isn’t the least bit surprised Collin discovered this outlet.
“It goes back to when he was playing in bantam or midget (leagues),” Nick Delia said. “The gear would consistently wear out, so we were always having to try to repair it or take it some place to repair it so it would stay together. He was always into improving things that could be designed a little bit better.”
When Delia was young, he received Legos for Christmas each year. They weren’t toys to him. He would get annoyed when friends didn’t treat his Lego creations with the reverence he felt they deserved. Instead playing with Legos and returning them to their box, he would create intricate, lasting structures that still exist in his parent’s homes.
Delia’s parents separated when he was 4, and the apartment his father moved into was near the Wayne Gretzky Roller Hockey Center in Irvine, Calif.
“I walked into the roller rink with my dad when I was 4 and I can tell you the colors of everything in the rink,” Delia said. “The smells, where everything is located. The skates I wore, the layout of the locker rooms, where the snack bar was, where the games were. I absorbed everything from that experience. I was very lucky to know what I wanted to do from a young age.”
For the first eight years of his hockey life, Delia was exclusively a roller-hockey goalie. Southern California just didn’t have a lot of ice rinks. He converted to ice when his parents recognized his skill and passion — and that colleges didn’t offer scholarships for roller-hockey goalies.
He tried out for a local team, the Junior Ducks, and made the team even though he had skated on ice only a few times. It came naturally to him.
“I felt like someone else was guiding my body in a way,” he said.
When he was 18, Delia moved to Texas to play for the Amarillo Bulls, a Tier II junior team. Two years later, he receive a scholarship offer from Merrimack. After becoming the starter as a sophomore, Delia attended a Hawks prospect camp. He returned to Merrimack for his junior year, then signed a two-year deal with the Hawks during the summer of 2017.
Delia’s first few months of pro hockey were rough. He was sent to the ECHL’s Indy Fuel and had a 4.12 goals-against average in 10 games. But in December 2017, the Hawks moved him to Rockford and everything began to come together. Delia got a brief call-up to the Hawks near the end of that season and started two games, including the one in which emergency backup goalie Scott Foster had to relieve Delia, who had developed cramps.
Delia began this season at Rockford but never stopped dreaming about Chicago.
“I would go to bed almost every night thinking what’s the process for me,” Delia said. “What am I going to pack to take to Chicago? I was thinking about the drive, thinking about pulling up to the United Center. Envisioning pulling my gear out of the car, taking it into the locker room, getting dressed, practicing — literally running through what could happen. Every night. Just being prepared. I thought that was my job as a member of the Blackhawks organization.”
When the Hawks promoted Delia after Corey Crawford’s injury, he had to leave most of his leather in Rockford. But he bought a traveling kit that allows him to do some work from his hotel room.
“I love the idea and the feeling of progress, working towards something,” Delia said. “I feel like I’ve always been working toward something. When I don’t have that it’s tough for me. Maybe last year when things weren’t going great with hockey, I found this. It was something I could say I did something good. I don’t know why it was leather specifically. I always just loved the tactile nature of sturdy leather bags, leather jackets, wallets, belts. Just the idea that something can outlive you.
“Hopefully, I’ll give that couch to my grandkids one day or my kids. My leather bags and my wallets. It’s like a legacy.”
Whether it’s goaltending or leather-making — or even Legos — Delia has found a recipe for success.
“Everything you do builds upon the other,” Delia said. “You make a mistake, it can compound if you don’t stop it right away. That’s huge. When you’re out on the ice and you let a goal in, do you snap backor are you still thinking about that goal? If I make a missed cut here on a piece of leather, am I going to fix it or am I going to just leave it because it’s good enough and no one’s going to see it?
“Every little thing matters.”