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Canisius College, Charles Williams, Devin Williams, Los Angeles Kings, Manchester Monarchs, St. Louis Blues, Tulsa Oilers
Charles and Devin Williams aren’t brothers, but they do belong to hockey’s goaltending brotherhood and have a lot in common.
Both are African-American Michiganders – Charles from Canton and Devin from Saginaw.
Manchester Monarchs goaltender Charles Williams.
Both were go-to goalies: Charles led tiny Canisius College to its first Atlantic Hockey regular season championship last season and Devin backstopped formidable Erie Otters teams in the Ontario Hockey League that featured a young phenom named Connor McDavid .
Both were skipped over by National Hockey League teams in recent drafts. Now both are enjoying impressive rookie seasons in the ECHL.
Charles, 25, has continued his winning ways from Canisius to the ECHL’s Manchester Monarchs, a Los Angeles Kings farm team that signed him to a contract in March.
He has a 7-3-1 record in 11 games and a 2.15 goals-against average, third-best in the ECHL. He has a .932 save percentage.
Charles Williams doing for the Manchester Monarchs what he did for Canisius College – locking down the net.
Devin, 22, has been hot for the Tulsa Oilers, a St. Louis Blues ECHL affiliate. He has a 4-2-2 record, 2.80 goals-against average, and a .912 save percentage in 11 games.
Tulsa Oilers goalie Devin Williams.
He was named the CCM/ECHL Goalie of the Month for October after going 4-0 with a 1.83 goals-against average and a .949 save percentage in five games.
Devin signed with Tulsa in September after playing a season of Canadian college hockey at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, where he posted an 8-4-0 record with a 2.80 goalst-against average and .896 save percentage.
“The game is quicker, but the big difference is how smart the guys are,” he told The Tulsa World of the adjustment from college to the pro game. “The higher you move up, I think, the smarter the guys are…I have been putting in a lot of work in practice to make sure I am ready for the game.”
Tulsa Oilers’ rookie Devin Williams earned ECHL Goalie of the Month honors for October (Photo/TeeJay Crawford Photography).
He enrolled at Acadia after he watched Erie teammates like McDavid, Nick Baptiste, Alex DeBrincat, and Dylan Strome get snatched up in NHL drafts.Teams took a pass on Devin despite his being a top OHL goalie, winning the Dave Pinkney Trophy in 2013-14 for having the league’s lowest goals-against average, being a second-team OHL all-star in 2015-16, and posting 73 wins in 102 games between 2014 and 2016.
Devin Williams played for the OHL’s Erie Otters from 2012-13 to 2015-16 (Photo/Aaron Bell/OHL Images).
While going to college helped keep Devin’s pro dreams alive, switching colleges helped re-ignite Charles’ pro ambitions.Charles had a decent career at NCAA Division I Ferris State University, posting a 22-15 record, 3.00 goals-against average, and a .899 save percentage over three seasons.
He missed the entire 2014-15 season at Ferris State because of injury. He was granted a fifth year of NCAA eligibility and transferred to Canisius, a D-I school in Buffalo, New York.
Goaltender Charles Williams was a finalist for the Hobey Baker Award, given to NCAA Division I’s best college hockey player, for his 2016-17 season at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York (Photo/Canisius College).
There, he compiled a 15-6-4 record in 34 regular season appearances last season and helped lead the Golden Griffins on a 17-game unbeaten string.A 2017 Hobey Baker Award finalist, Charles led all NCAA D-I goalies with a .946 save percentage, tied for second with 6 shutouts, and his 1.83 goals-against average was second-best in the nation .
No wonder that Canisius named Charles its Male Athlete of the Year for 2017.
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