With today being Hockey Day in America, and since I was born deep in the heart of Texas, I had to celebrate in style. So I woke up early, tuned into NBC and watched the stories on a number of players that are a part of the fabric of US hockey. Of course, I’ll be playing drop-in soon, then watching the Heritage Classic this afternoon. And since I’m very proud to be an American-born goaltender, I figured I would shed a little light on my own hockey story.

Born in March of 1982, I was raised on a 15-acre farm that sat smack in the middle of Parker, a small town in North Texas. My parents, who had moved south from Manhattan back in the 1970′s, re-located to this farming village for the simple reason that they wanted a simpler life. My mother’s biggest passion was horses, so our farm allowed her to train five of them. She raised them way before she gave birth to me, so they were, in essence, her bigger, hairier children. And I was fine with that, for they were my brothers, and I loved them very much.

Ever since I could remember, I was always outside. Roaming our property on bike or on foot, I traveled up and down the trodden paths of our farm pastures discovering snakes, crazy bugs, awesome pecan trees and many other elements of nature. I lived in an adventurous world and hiked around on a daily basis, constantly learning new things through sheer experience.

The best memory I have of growing up on our farm, aside from the glorious horses, was an extremely long creek that stretched for many miles across the entire county of Parker. Our property was plotted to stretch north and south, but the creek stretched east and west. So I would always walk to the back of our property, tie a rope to a tree, work my way down to the bottom of the creek…and just start walking. I always discovered something new and I always found away to increase my love for nature and the outdoors.

So growing up, hockey wasn’t even a sport I knew existed. I was raised as a free-spirited cowboy that mucked out stalls, wandered around the property and helped my mom train and feed the horses. That’s all I knew and that’s all I really cared about. I had never heard of hockey, I had never seen it played before and I had never skated on a sheet of ice. I think it snowed once during my first 10 years on this earth.

—[ ENTER THE DALLAS STARS ]—

But one day, when I was 11, the farm was no longer a part of our lives. My parents sold it and we moved to north Dallas. It just so happens that the same year we moved to the city, a hockey team named the Minnesota North Stars were also potentially moving to Dallas. It was this situation that brought the game of pro hockey into my life forever.

Because my friends and I had been paying attention to the situation, we naturally started playing street hockey. It was easy to learn how to rollerbladebecause we were always outside to begin with. Fortunately, Dallas was home to a couple of Central Hockey League teams, the Dallas Freeze and the Fort Worth Fire. It would be in 1993 when I attended my first-ever pro hockey game for a friend’s birthday party, and it was a clash between the two rival teams.

At that game, I instantly became a huge fan of the sport. I was amazed by the pace, the flow, and of course, the goaltenders. It was an aggressive sport and it all happened so fluidly, and with such speed, that I was reminded of quicksilver on a metal surface. It was a frictionless and chaotic sport, yet at the same time so very graceful and natural.

As if my friends and I weren’t already falling in love with hockey, our passion for skating in the streets exploded. It’s all we did after school and it’s all we did on the weekends. We would bounce from friend’s house to friend’s house, carrying our goals made from PVC pipes and chicken wire, along with our duffel bags stuffed with skates, sticks, gloves and canteens filled with water that got warm way too quickly. Such was the way of Texas street hockey in the mid-1990′s.

—[ OZZIE INJECTS THE PASSION ]—

For a number of reasons, I was instantly drawn to being the goaltender. It was the acrobatic and natural movements that enticed me, as well as the role of being the last line of defense. It was the equipment, it was the mission of being a gatekeeper and it was simply a natural progression in my life. So with plastic Mylec pads, a baseball glove and a pillow glued to the back of a cotton mitten, I became a goalie. I was 11 years old.

Over the next year, the sale of the Minnesota North Stars was finalized and the National Hockey League finally landed in Dallas in the Fall of 1994. By that time, my friends and I were bursting at the seams with excitement and ready to embrace the pro sport and meet the team that would quickly become a fabric of our teenage years.

Thanks to ESPN and ESPN2, we were already watching the NHL on TV and learning about the teams, the players and the intricacies of the game. It was the spring of 1994 that Chris Osgood was introduced to my life. I wrote about his influence here, when I reflected on his 400th career win, a game I was fortunate to experience in person. Talk about life coming full circle. He was, and continues to be, my idol and the inspiration and reason why I became such a passionate goaltender and hockey player.

When the Stars arrived and held their first practice at the Dr. Pepper StarsCenter in Valley Ranch, my friends and I were there, pasted to the glass and ready to take it all in. Everyone knows how much bigger everything is in Texas, and the first players to hit the ice remind me of that word – they were just so big. Those players were the goaltenders. Andy Moog and Darcy Wakaluk, followed by defensemen Derian Hatcher and Craig Ludwig.

As soon as I saw the goaltenders hit the ice, my budding passion for the position was finalized and that was the moment I went from cowboy to crease monkey. I traded my leather saddles for leather leg pads and took the next three years to self-teach myself the position. I was a rabid fan of the Stars and I was fortunate for my father’s support, as we got season tickets to the Stars and went to every home game from 1996 to 2000.

Over those years, which happened to be my four years of high school, my passion grew, as did my ability to play the position. It was all I ever did. I played every day on the streets until enough ice hockey rinks were built in Dallas to where I could attend morning and afternoon drop-in sessions. I helped my high school, Jesuit College Preparatory School, start their first-ever hockey team and I was (by default) the starting goalie for the varsity team for three years. I won a number of awards and was proud to be a part of the grassroots youth hockey movement in Texas.

Although I was extremely committed to playing at a high level, I realized my senior year of high school that playing as a professional wasn’t in the cards. I was too small, and lacked the skating fundamentals needed to stand out from the bigger goalies at my age. I had a chance to play juniors, but education was, and continues to be, a very important part of my life.

—[ CONTINUING MY EDUCATION ]—

At certain points in everybody’s life, things happen that reveal the natural path of existence. You’re guided along and you make easy decisions that build your career or your passion for certain things. Fortunately for me, lightning struck twice. Just like the Stars came to Dallas, so too did the Colorado Eagles come to Fort Collins when I was a sophomore at CSU. Because of this, my career as a pro hockey writer and analyst began.

I made the easy decision to go from playing club hockey to covering the same league that introduced me to hockey – the Central Hockey League. The Colorado Eagles appointed me as the team’s first-ever beat reporter and I covered the team for CSU’s student-run newspaper, the Rocky Mountain Collegian. I was very fortunate to cover the team on a daily basis and get to know some terrific players like Greg Pankewicz, Ryan Tobler, Riley Nelson and goaltender Tyler Weiman, who currently plays with the Manitoba Moose.

From there, I became the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Colorado Hockey Insider, then a radio analyst for the Colorado Avalanche on two radio stations, KBPI 106.7 FM and Mile High Sports Radio AM 1510. I am still on both of these stations today and I was honored to be accepted as a member of the Pro Hockey Writer’s Association back in 2006.

With nothing more than a few years of American Collegiate Hockey Association (ACHA) experience under my belt, I have never once lacked confidence in my ability to scout and develop a goaltender. The reason for this is due to another aspect of nature called mimicry, as well as the importance of embracing the idea of continuing education.

First of all, I learned to play the position by mimicking what I saw. I have seriously watched NHL games every single day from age 12 to today, and I’m really not kidding. It’s not considered “work” to me and it’s not an unhealthy obsession that pulls me away from my friends and family. It’s just what I do and what I know and how I love to learn.

With an extremely focused, keen mind and very sharp eyesight, I have the ability to notice and read a pro goalie’s most subtle movements and thought processes. I eliminate all distractions and focus all of my energy on every little movement they make. I read plays, I understand situational awareness and I am able to put myself in their skates and mimic in my mind what is going through their mind. Of course there are limitations to this ability, but it has taught me everything I know about the position from a technical and mental point of view.

This ability to read a goaltender’s skill and style, as well as their body language, demeanor and state of mind, has brought me to where I am today. And I am extremely confident that everything I write regarding a goaltender and the goaltending position is insightful and valuable to those who want to learn.

Secondly, I never claim to know it all. I understand that every goalie and situation is different, every situation is diferent, and everyone reacts to those situations differently as well. Every game I watch is a chance to learn something new. Every new prospect is a chance to learn something new about the position and the game. This is what keeps me from getting burned out on the sport I love. I’ll never see two goalies that are exactly the same and I love to see how goalies react to situations unique in their own career and how it impacts their mental toughness and their success at the pro level.

So by absorbing what I see and knowing that I’ll never see two situations that are exactly the same, scouting goaltenders is a limitless world with no rules and no boundaries. Every goalie is capable of being amazing and really struggling. Every goalie can win and lose. It just depends on the elements that create their set and setting and then how the goalie reacts to situations thrown their way. Continuing education happens naturally and every night I go to sleep learning something new. 

—[ GOALTENDING ROOTED IN ANCIENT HISTORY ]—

In 2007, I started my own company, The Hockey Guild, and in 2008 I started The Goalie Guild, which has grown over the last two years to become the only independent goalie scouting service in North America. And with all of that being said, I think the education component is where I can break away from my story and quickly reflect on why goaltending became such a natural fit in my life.

I think that’s it, right there. It is so very natural.

There is a living, breathing connection between my life spent outdoors in nature and my lust for stopping pucks. Not only is the position an artistic reflection of natural movements and the ability to naturally read plays and track the puck, but the entire game of hockey was formed in a natural surrounding. We all know the game started outdoors. It was on frozen ponds and frozen sheets of ice in Canada and Europe that the game was born.

Therefore, it comes as no surprise, that this cowboy became a crease monkey. I was born and raised outside and I think many elements of hockey seeped into my subconscious when I started playing the game on the streets and then finally on the ice. But goaltending and hockey in my life runs so much deeper than just the connection of playing outside and growing up in nature. It is the internal, ancient mental connection that really intrigues me and fuels my fire on a daily basis.

Although I have no concrete evidence to back me up, and although I feel it has taken on many shapes and forms, I seriously believe that goaltending evolved over hundreds and hundreds of years as an ancient sport that was rooted in the Middle Ages. I just feel that somewhere in Europe or in Scandinavia, a medieval knight played some kind of sport that included a position similar to today’s NHL goaltender.

The connection exists in so many ways. A warrior clad in armor from head to toe, fighting for victory in some kind of tournament or battle. It’s this similarity that has intrigued me since I was young that I have brought to life with The Goalie Guild. I shape and mold everything you see here in a medieval manner because I believe so strongly in that ancient connection between a knight clad in armor and an NHL goaltender clad in leather and kevlar.

What other way is there to describe how a cowboy from Texas could naturally become a competitive goaltender and a pro goalie scout? We all have a calling, we all have a path. Goaltending is mine and I’m very proud to be an American-born hockey player living out this role in the world. There are so many motivating and positive stories to celebrate today, and I hope that mine can help build on this new tradition of Hockey Day in America.