InGoal Radio · In Their Own Words

The Goalie's First Coach

We're transcribing our entire podcast archive, and as that work rolls on we went back through the episodes already done and pulled together the stories goalies have told us about their dads, their moms, and the families who made it all possible. Here's a Father's Day collection drawn straight from the show.

There's a version of every goalie's story that starts the same way: somebody had to drive them there. Somebody bought the pads, sat in the cold, and believed in the kid in the crease before anyone else did. This Father's Day, here's a stick-tap to the hockey parents — pulled from the goalies themselves, in their own words on InGoal Radio.

Start with the father and son who came on together

If you only listen to one, make it Episode 318, where Joey Daccord brought his dad, Brian, into the studio with him. It's a full father-and-son interview, and the detail that lingers is the ritual: before every game Joey has ever started, Brian texts him a photo. “Sometimes it's funny. Sometimes it's motivational… Every game. Every game I start.” Brian's reasoning is the whole holiday in three sentences: “It's exactly three hours before every game… I just wanna let them know I'm there for them. You're not alone. We're in this together.” Before Joey's first game for Team USA, the photo was Joey's boyhood idol, Corey Schneider, in a USA sweater. “I was in tears on the bus on the way to the game,” Joey said. “Goddamn it, Dad.” The two have been on the ice together for almost a quarter of a century.

“Earn the crease first” — the dads who made them wait

A surprising number of goalie dads tried to keep their kids out of the net, and the kids had to fight their way in. Ryan Miller, the winningest American goalie in NHL history, only got there by staging a protest. Watching games with a young Ryan on his lap, his father kept steering his attention anywhere but the goalie: “He kinda went the other direction trying to get me interested in everything else about hockey. But I was always kinda brought back to it, to the point where I had to force my way in.” How he forced it: “I had to get, like, three goals and three assists after I had a little sit-down strike. So that's kinda how I fell into it.” (Episode 11; he revisits his career on Episode 137.)

Braden Holtby's goalie dad ran the same playbook and got out-stubborned by a six-year-old: “My dad, who was a goalie, didn't want me to be a goalie, because he was a goalie. There was another kid on the team that said, ‘I can do the splits, I can be the goalie.’ And my dad was like, ‘Alright, you're the goalie.’ And I went home and I just practiced until I could do the splits.” He'd later wear No. 1 in junior just to match his dad. (From his members' InGoal InPerson seminar with John Stevenson.)

Brett Jaeger's dad, a senior-hockey player himself, refused to let young Brett play net full-time until he was 13, so he'd learn to skate first. “I wasn't happy at the time,” Jaeger said, “but if I didn't have my skating I wouldn't be where I am. I'm very thankful he chose that path for me” (Episode 355). Colin Zulianello tells nearly the identical story — made to play out as well as in goal — and now credits the perspective it gave him (Episode 303).

And then there's the dad who engineered failure on purpose. Adin Hill — now a Stanley Cup champion — had a father who deliberately put him on weak spring-hockey teams so he'd face a barrage. “Some years I would play for one of the worst teams in the city, so I would get 50 shots a game. And my dad understood that. Yes, it was on purpose. It's like, you're gonna put in the work now, so then down the road it's gonna pay off.” Hill calls him “my biggest supporter of all… anybody who makes it to the level we're at, their dad helps them along the way” (Episode 119).

Born into it — when Dad was already a goalie

For some, the crease was the family business. Dan Stewart's first memory of the position is “him literally with my diaper bag over his shoulder taking me to his men's-league games in Port Hope, Ontario” (Episode 304). Frederik Andersen grew up sitting on his goalie father's pads in the dressing room before he was old enough to play (Episode 48). Filip Gustavsson's dad was a defenseman, and those trips to watch him are exactly where the goaltending bug bit: “My dad was a defenseman… I always went and watched his game” (Episode 293).

The miles — the parents who drove

Steve Valiquette remembers his father waking him at 5 a.m. and taking the family cube van down to Toronto for goalie school, with a forty-five-minute nap on a cot in Dad's office before the ice (Episode 323). Jacob Fowler's family lived four hours from his team in Florida: “Every week my mom would have to leave work at noon and we'd drive four hours to practice… you learn what it takes for them to sacrifice their lives to put mine first. To be in the NHL and share that with them makes it feel like everything they did was worth it” (Episode 339). Hampton Slukynsky's dad built a backyard rink with boards, lights, and music: “That's where you develop the love for the game” (Episode 348).

On the women's side, two-time Olympic gold medalist Shannon Szabados owes her start to a dad who kept handing her the net: “My dad coached a lot… no one ever wanted to go in there, so he'd be like, ‘Hey, do you want to go in net again?’ And for whatever reason, I absolutely loved it.” Her parents then drove her to Bill Ranford's goalie school every summer — “the only goalie camp I ever went to.” (full episode). Ottawa's Kendra Woodland tells a similar story of $5 public-skate sessions with her dad: “half gear in the middle of the ice… really good memories with him” (Episode 334).

The whole family in on it

Sometimes the first coach was a brother. Anthony Stolarz fell for the game watching his older brother Todd tend goal, inherited his hand-me-down gear (“my first set of pads were actually older than me”), and still leans on him — Todd helped design Anthony's World Championship pads (Episode 122). Sometimes it was Mom: Jake Oettinger says “my mom kinda got me into hockey,” and it was her nudge that put him in net for the first time (Episode 176). And Brandon Bussi's father came to every camp “with the notebook out, writing down the drills,” then ran them with Brandon's team all season — “he did an exceptional job of the balance between being a father and a coach” (Episode 209).

Full circle

The goalies who had it passed down are passing it down now. Ryan Miller, with his own young son on the ice, finally understands his dad: “I'm gonna take the same approach my dad did… it wasn't that he didn't want me in the net. He was just kinda worried about what a goalie goes through.” Szabados, an Olympian who knows the position cold, laughs that she hopes her daughter picks anything else — “I saw what my parents went through. My parents were way more nervous than I was for any game. Both of them said they almost threw up before the [2010 Olympic] game in Vancouver.” The nerves, it turns out, are hereditary too.

And the most famous hockey dad of them all

No goalie Father's Day list is complete without Jerry Price. To get a young Carey from tiny Anahim Lake to the nearest team in Williams Lake, Jerry bought a four-seat Piper Cherokee for $13,000 and flew him there himself, turning a nearly four-hour drive each way into a 45-minute hop. Carey called the plane “a lawnmower with wings,” and the flights “the best part — to spend some quality time with my pops.” He never told us that one on air, but you can hear plenty from Carey in our Episode 31 with Carey Price.

Happy Father's Day to every parent who laced the skates, drove the miles, and sat in the cold so a kid could play the hardest position in sports.