Throughout 35 years of history, the Hockey East Association has had quite a large share of national championship teams, Hobey Baker Award winners and alumni make the move up to the National Hockey League ranks.
Another constant over the years has been the presence of some of the game’s top goaltenders, such as Providence’s Chris Terreri from the inaugural 1984-85 season to long lines of netminders who spent their collegiate times on Commonwealth Avenue and in New Hampshire and Maine. UMass Lowell’s Connor Hellebucyk and UMass’ Jonathan Quick (Hamden, Conn.) are among alumni playing in today’s NHL.
It’s no secret that the trend continues today.
“Really, the league could be called ‘Goalie East,’ ” said Vermont head coach Kevin Sneddon, whose team boasts the top returning stopper in senior Stefanos Lekkas, a second-team All-Star with a .930 save percentage — the highest in Catamount program history — last season. “I still believe Stef is the best goalie in Hockey East, but you look around the league and you wonder why our (team’s) offensive numbers were down? You’re going against somebody every night.
“We used to joke about it, like, ‘Who doesn’t have a good goalie?’ ”
The undrafted Lekkas surely will find a professional home at season’s end, but Hockey East is again filled with NHL goaltending prospects even as six teams will see a change in their most frequent starter from a season ago due to graduations and/or NHL signings.
The Beanpot trio of Boston College’s Joseph Woll, Boston University’s Jake Oettinger and Northeastern’s Cayden Primeau completely departed for the pro ranks. Providence’s Hayden Hawkey and UMass Lowell’s Christoffer Hernberg finished out their college careers as seniors. Still, Lowell and New Hampshire have two goaltenders with NHL logos next to their names on the line chart after UConn also made that distinction a year ago.
Playing in Hockey East is a challenge in itself, but perhaps goaltending is the toughest job of them all.
Sneddon considered the 5-foot-9 Lekkas as “the MVP just about every night” for a team that beat Michigan to begin last season but finished just 5-16-3 in Hockey East play. Even as the Catamounts surrendered the third-most shots of any team in the conference, the Elburn, Ill., native still made the third-most saves of any goaltender in the conference as he started in all 34 of Vermont’s games.
Despite a lack of “run support” (Vermont scored just 2.12 goals per game) throughout the year, nothing has changed for Lekkas. He’s focused on using his athletic style of goaltending for one final college season and hoping to backstop the Catamounts to more wins and a return to the Hockey East postseason field.
“The goal was always to give the team a chance to win,” said Lekkas, who calls Quick his top goaltending influence in the NHL. “I was just trying to play my game and focus on one period, one shot at a time. We ended up losing a lot of one-goal games, but you just have to control what you can control.”
Such a roller-coaster season offered a lot of teaching points for Lekkas entering the offseason, but Sneddon knows his senior handled the added pressure well and has all the tools to take his game to an even greater level after working on reads and slowing down “high-pace plays” during the offseason.
As a result, he was given a rare responsibility for a goaltender in being named one of the team’s assistant captains.
“We put him in a lot of tough situations where he had to make remarkable saves. The stats are very impressive, but some of the timely saves he made to keep us in games were even more special,” Vermont’s 17th-year bench boss said. “He didn’t get frustrated by it … and it’s very exciting for our coaching staff and players to see the work he’s put in to get even better. He’s just an unbelievable young man to coach.”
The roller coaster that is college hockey is just beginning for yet another touted BC goalie. Darien, Conn., native Spencer Knight follows new Maple Leafs prospect Woll into the Eagles net.
Woll started 101 games over his three college seasons and leaves the crease for Knight, who spent a prep year under legendary coach John Gardner at Avon Old Farms and joins a BC freshman class that includes a program-record three first-round NHL draftees from June. Knight, who was drafted 13th overall by Florida, is just the 10th American-born goaltender ever drafted in the first round and the first with a top-15 pick since 2010.
Though he grew up closer to New York than Boston and was a Rangers fan, Knight knows BC is a place he always could see himself being. Being surrounded by such elite talent and playing for the sport’s all-time winningest coach, Jerry York (Watertown, Mass.), while competing in one of the nation’s toughest leagues didn’t hurt either.
“If you grew up in Minnesota you’d dream of playing at a college in Minnesota, so I think you think of all the Hockey East schools when you’re from around here,” said Knight. “I wanted to go to a school in Boston because it’s an amazing hockey city and getting to play in the Beanpot was also really cool. BC is one of those places you want to go to if you grow up in the Northeast and want to play college hockey.”
Just one other program in the country churned out more talent for the NHL last year. Knight is excited to join an extensive pipeline (21 players in total) that includes New Jersey’s Cory Schneider (Marblehead, Mass.) and Vancouver’s Thatcher Demko. Now Woll, a fellow product of the U.S. National Team Development Program, is hoping to join the line.
“You just want to come in and play your own game, but it just helps knowing that they have a great system here and such a track record for goalies,” Knight said. “Going to ‘The Program’ was just another awesome place to play, and it’s kind of a pipeline for schools here. When players that you idolize take that route, it encourages you to do the same.”
Seventh-year BC assistant coach and former UNH goaltender Mike Ayers (Hingham, Mass.) knows the value of playing in the NTDP, as he spent two years as goaltending coach. Not only does the Under-18 squad play a schedule that features college opponents on an annual basis, but the experience on and off the ice helps players make an easier, quicker transition at the start of their own college careers.
In Knight, he sees impressive traits for a freshman and some similarities to Woll’s overall game.
“Him and Joe are very similar in terms of personalities, being students of the game and processing everything, so our conversations have been fun so far,” Ayers said. “His efficiency stands out the most. Joe was very athletic and showed it, whereas Spencer is more controlled, more relaxed and patient within his movements. It’s really impressive for a young kid.”
Another one of the league’s starters looking to continue his success currently wears UNH’s traditional blue and white. Junior Mike Robinson stops pucks in tandem with sophomore Ty Taylor, doing so with plenty of “Granite State pride” as a Bedford, N.H., native.
Like Lekkas, Robinson played in pressure-packed situations throughout his sophomore season as UNH needed overtime in a nation-leading 14 of its 35 games.
While posting a .915 save percentage and earning 11 of the Wildcats’ 12 wins during his first season after three-year starter Danny Tirone’s (Trumbull, Conn.) graduation, Robinson gained his own and his team’s confidence between the pipes.
With another year of experience under their belts in the Hockey East fray, the Wildcats are hoping to turn some of those close results, including nine ties, into wins. They were right there in so many games.
“Last year was a step in the right direction and we were in the mix as a team. I think the guys gained a lot of trust in me and I had a lot of trust in them, so it’s kind of a unique role that goes both ways,” Robinson said of the goalie’s unique position on a team. “The guys know that I’m going to save the puck for them and a defenseman, for example, is going to have my back on a backdoor play or something.”
The goaltender often has to shoulder responsibility for wins and losses, but there is an even greater responsibility for Robinson in that he is a New Hampshire native. As one in another line of talented locals, he does not take that job lightly.
“I was one of those kids up in the stands (at the Whittemore Center), so I remember Brian Foster, who’s a local (Pembroke, N.H.) and, when I was a little older, Casey DeSmith (Rochester, N.H.),” said Robinson, who was the San Jose Sharks’ third-round draft pick after a season at Lawrence Academy in 2015. “It’s an honor to play for your home state’s team. There’s so much tradition in this program, and Coach (Mike) Souza (Wakefield, Mass.) really lets us recognize that.”
New Englanders like Robinson and Knight have had an up-close look at the challenges of a Hockey East season throughout their hockey careers, while Lekkas and others were thrown into the fire at the start of their collegiate tenures.
No matter where a goaltender falls in that spectrum, the honor of playing in such a competitive league and following in the footsteps of so many talented players is not lost.
“It definitely proves a lot to goalies when one has a good game because it’s not an easy league,” said Robinson. “I think we definitely get recognized for that. When a team is doing well in Hockey East, you have to have good goaltending. It obviously doesn’t go unnoticed.”
