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‘Making Coco’ documentary goes behind the mask of Hall of Fame goalie Grant Fuhr

03 Monday Sep 2018

Posted by William Douglas in Uncategorized

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Buffalo Sabres, Calgary Flames, Edmonton Oilers, Fred Brathwaite, Glen Sather, Grant Fuhr, Mark Messier, St. Louis Blues, Toronto Maple Leafs, Wayne Grettzky

Grant Fuhr was a man of few words during his National Hockey League career.

“Back then, five words was a long conversation for me,” Fuhr told me recently.

Grant Fuhr was Edmonton’s first-round draft pick in 1981.

Fuhr preferred to let his play in goal do the talking, winning five Stanley Cup championships with the Edmonton Oilers from 1984 to 1990, capturing the Vezina Trophy as the NHL’s best goaltender in 1988, being named one of the NHL’s 100 Greatest Players, and becoming the first black player to be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2003.

“The Great One,” Hall of Fame center Wayne Gretzky,  also vouched for his former Oilers teammate, calling him “the greatest goalie that ever lived.”

Fuhr tells his story with the help of Gretzky and other NHL legends in Making Coco: The Grant Fuhr Story,” a Sportsnet documentary that goes behind the mask of one of the league’s most acrobatic, dominating, and enigmatic goaltenders.

“I think the biggest thing is it’s a chance for people to see what my life was actually like,” said Fuhr, who was nicknamed “Coco” during his playing days. “There has always been speculation, guessing and such, and everybody thinks that the world is glamorous all of the time.”

Audiences will get a first glimpse of the film at a private screening in Toronto during the Toronto Film Festival on Tuesday, September 11. The documentary will have its world premiere at the Calgary International Film Festival on Saturday, September 29, as part of the festival’s closing gala.

“Making Coco” will be televised in December on Sportsnet in Canada. The film’s producer says he’s still working on when and where it will be shown in the United States and elsewhere.

“Grant’s often forgotten on those great Oliers team because there were so many great players,” said Adam Scorgie, producer of the documentary directed by Don Metz. “You had arguably one of the greatest players to ever play (Gretzky), one of the greatest leaders in Mark Messier and you forget how good Grant Fuhr was backstopping that team and all the boundaries he broke within the NHL.  He was the first black superstar, the first to win the Stanley Cup and the first black to be inducted in the Hall of Fame.”

The Oilers teams of Fuhr’s era were known for their offensive prowess, not their defensive skill. Yes, they had a Hall of Famer in smooth-skating offensive-minded defensman Paul Coffey, who states flatly in “Making Coco” that “I don’t block shots.”

The Oilers’ defense was its offense, which often left Fuhr to fend for himself at the other end of the rink.

“I licked my chops every time we were going to play them ’cause I knew I was going to get three or four two-on-ones guaranteed,” Tony McKegney, the NHL’s first black player to score 40 goals in a season, told me recently. “Well, we did and we would lose out there 7 to 4 or something like that. During those games, Grant would make five or seven spectacular saves. Obviously, Wayne and Messier and Glenn Anderson were the story, but if you asked them today they would admit they had four guys up the ice all the time to score knowing Grant was back there.”

Grant Fuhr won five Stanley Cups during 10 seasons with the offensively-gifted Edmonton Oilers. On many nights, the netminder nicknamed “Coco” had little help defensively.

Because of Edmonton’s go-go offense and gone-gone defense, Fuhr has a career goals-against average of 3.38 – the highest among all Hall of Fame goaltenders.

Other Hall inductees with regular season GAA’s over 3.00? Georges Vezina (3.28) – yeah, the trophy guy- and the New York Islanders’ Billy Smith (3.17), who has four Stanley Cup rings to Fuhr’s five.

Fuhr compiled a 403-295-114 (ties) record and posted 25 shutouts in 868 regular season games with Edmonton, the Toronto Maple Leafs, Buffalo Sabres, St. Louis Blues, Los Angeles Kings and Calgary Flames from 1981-82 to 1999-2000. He had a 92-50 record in 150 Stanley Cup playoff games, including six shutouts.

And Fuhr wouldn’t be a true Oiler if he didn’t provide some offense. His 46 points – all assists – that places him third among NHL goalies behind Tom Barrasso’s 48 points and soon-to-be Hall of Fame inductee Martin Brodeur’s 47 points. Three of Brodeur’s points are goals that he actually scored or was given credit for.

Fuhr’s accomplishments aren’t bad for a player who many hockey experts thought was overweight, broken-down, and washed up when the Blues signed him in 1995-96.

He revived his career in St. Louis, thanks in large part to training with Bob Kersee, a world-class African-American track coach and husband of U.S. Olympic track Gold Medalist Jackie Joyner-Kersee.

After appearing in only 49 games for three different teams in 1993-94 and 1994-95, Fuhr played in a whopping 79 games in 1995-96 and 73 contests in 1996-97 for the Blues and posted a 63-55-27 record in those two seasons.

Grant Fuhr shows off the bling from five Stanley Cup championship rings won with the Edmonton Oilers (Photo/Derek Heisler/www.derekheisler.com).

“It saved my body, it got my body through a lot,” Fuhr said of the training. “The body was good, but it became so much better. And I got a better understanding of it, what I was capable of, and how I could play around certain injuries.”

Fuhr’s legacy and longevity captivated another goaltender of color, Fred Brathwaite, who became a teammate in Fuhr’s final NHL season in Calgary.

Growing up in Ottawa, Brathwaite so idolized Fuhr that he put up a poster of the veteran goaltender in his bedroom at his mother’s house, where it still hangs today.

“Just the way he could raise his game to the level it could be,” said Brathwaite, a Hockey Canada goalie coach who was the New York Islanders’ goalie coach last season. “He might let in a goal or two, but when it came down the final thing, he’d raise his game up to help his team win Stanley Cups, or Canada Cups, and all those other things. I was very fortunate, very lucky, to play with him in his last year of hockey.”

Former NHL goalie Fred Brathwaite is such a Grant Fuhr fan that he keeps a poster of the five-time Stanley Cup winner in the bedroom of his boyhood home in Ottawa. The two became teammates on the Calgary Flames in Fuhr’s final NHL season in 1999-2000 (Photo/Fred Brathwaite).

Fuhr considers considers himself lucky, despite the ups and downs he experienced in his life and career.

The child of black and white biological parents, he was adopted by a white family in Spruce Grove, Alberta, Canada, and was lured to the net by all the neat gear that goaltenders wear.

Small town Spruce Grove and Western Canada served as an incubator of sorts for Fuhr in the early stages of his career.

He said he never really experienced racial hostility on or off the ice the way players like forwards Devante Smith-Pelly of the Washington Capitals,  Wayne Simmonds of the Philadelphia Flyers and Nashville Predators defenseman P.K. Subban have endured in recent seasons.

“The Great One,” former Edmonton Oilers center Wayne Gretzky, calls Grant Fuhr the greatest goalie ever in “Making Coco: The Grant Fuhr Story.”

Fuhr thinks that the NHL’s first generation of black players – forwards Willie O’Ree, Mike Marson, Bill Riley, Val James, and McKegney ran that gauntlet for him.

“Some of the (minority) guys that played in the minors in the states, they did all the heavy lifting,” Fuhr said. “Guys like Val James, Bill Riley, Mike Marson, they did the heavy lifting, they went through all the abuse.”

He said he didn’t feel or sense racism’s sting until he was traded to the Sabres in 1992-93 and after a suburban country club where other Sabres players and team officials were members initially denied him membership.

Retired Calgary Flames captain Jarome Iginla being interviewed about what it was like being an opponent and later a teammate of Grant Fuhr in “Making Coco: The Grant Fuhr Story).

“The more you traveled in the states, the more you could see it (racism). You live in an element where race matters a little bit and people have some pointed views on it,” he said.  “You would think that as time progresses and as history progresses that it would get better. And, if anything, in the last for or five years, it has taken steps backwards.”

Fuhr doesn’t shy away in the film from discussing perhaps the lowest point in his career – a one-year suspension by the NHL in 1990 after he admitted that he abused cocaine from 1983 to 1989. The league reinstated him after he served five months of the penalty.

Embed from Getty Images

“I went to the school of life and, unfortunately, not everything runs as smoothly as it’s supposed to. You make mistakes along the way, and there’s a great price to pay,” he said. “I think the biggest thing is that I lived life – good, bad and otherwise.

“I wasn’t sheltered from anything. I didn’t protect myself from anything. So, yeah, you can make mistakes and still have a positive life out of it,” he added. “There are things in school that they don’t teach you. The only way to learn ’em is by falling on your own. Yeah, I tripped and fell on my face a few times.”

But from the falls, Fuhr said he’s now able to teach others on how to avoid stumbling.

“Kids that I help out now, talk to and such, I get a little bit of credibility because of having been through it instead of someone telling them ‘Hey, this is how it has to be’ having never been through it.  Having been though it, and been through it in a public way, I get a little more credibility from them.”

Follow the Color of Hockey on Facebook and Twitter @ColorOfHockey. And download the Color of Hockey podcast from iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud and Google Play.

 

 

 

 

 

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Former Florida Panthers enforcer Peter Worrell joins pro hockey’s coaching ranks

14 Saturday Jul 2018

Posted by William Douglas in Uncategorized

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ACHA, Anaheim Ducks, Colorado Avalanche, Florida Panthers, Frantz Jean, Fred Brathwaite, New York Islanders, Nigel Kirwan, Peter Worrell, Scott Gomez, Tampa Bay Lightning, University of Nebraska Omaha

 Peter Worrell punched his way into professional hockey. Now he’s looking to coach his way back to the pros.

Worrell, who accumulated more than 1,500 penalty minutes as a left wing and enforcer for the Florida Panthers and Colorado Avalanche from 1997-98 to 2003-04, was named assistant coach of the Fayetteville Marksmen of the single-A Southern Professional Hockey League last week.

Former Florida Panthers forward Peter Worrell in 2002.

A Panthers 1995 seventh-round draft pick, Worrell quickly turned to coaching after playing his last professional game with the ECHL’s Charlotte Checkers in 2005-06.

He returned to Florida the following season to become head coach of North Broward Preparatory School. He assumed additional responsibility in 2010-11 when he became bench boss of Florida Atlantic University’s American Collegiate Hockey Association’s Division III team.

“When I ended my seasons last year, I made the decision I wanted to explore new challenges,” Worrell said. “I contacted a lot of teams, in many leagues. When I first contacted the Marksmen and I talked to (Head Coach Jesse) Kallechy, it just felt right. It was a big decision for me, as I was comfortable in my previous positions, but everyone in Fayetteville has been so welcoming and first class, I know I couldn’t have found a better position.”

And Kallechy believes that he couldn’t have found a better bench sidekick for the Fayetteville, North Carolina, team than Worrell.

“He blew me away in the interview process,” Kallechy said. “He was an excellent communicator, our views on player personnel aligned, and he is eager to learn and bring fresh viewpoints to the team.”

Embed from Getty Images

Worrell will become the SPHL’s second black coach when the puck drops for the 2018-19 season. In May, the Macon Mayhem tapped Leo Thomas as its head coach, making him the only black professional hockey head coach in North America.

While the SPHL’s minority coaching numbers grow, the ranks of coaches of color in the National Hockey League declined following 2017-18 season.

The Calgary Flames let go veteran Assistant Coach Paul Jerrard, who was the league’s only minority coach to work behind the bench during games.

He wasn’t unemployed very long. The University of Nebraska Omaha Mavericks hired Jerrard in May to be an assistant coach for the National Collegiate Hockey Conference team.

“He has a very good track record of developing players,” UNO Head Coach Mike Gabinet said. “I knew, first off, how good of a person he was having played for him. He was my (defense) coach. And when you’re a player, people always ask you afterward who’s influenced you as a coach.”

Jerrard, who played hockey for Lake Superior State University from 1983-84 to 1986-87, said he’s stoked about returning to the college game. He tallied 40 goals and 73 assists in 156 games as a defenseman for the Lakers.

He brings to the bench 2⃣1⃣ years of coaching experience across the NHL, AHL and college hockey. 💪

Get to know Omaha's newest staff addition, assistant coach Paul Jerrard! pic.twitter.com/aRvOUPkGVW

— Omaha Hockey (@OmahaHKY) June 8, 2018

“I’ve always loved college hockey, and I’m looking forward to working with and developing our players, not just in their careers but academically as well to help them prepare for success in the future,” he said.

The NHL’s remaining coaches of color are goalie coaches Sudarshan Maharaj of the Anaheim Ducks, Frantz Jean, of the Tampa Bay Lightning and Fred Brathwaite of the New York Islanders.

Scott Gomez is on the Isles’ coaching staff and Nigel Kirwan serves as a video coach for the Lightning.

Follow the Color of Hockey on Facebook and Twitter @ColorOfHockey. Download the Color of Hockey podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud, and Stitcher.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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N.Y. Islanders are ready for Freddy, name Brathwaite as new goalie coach

11 Tuesday Jul 2017

Posted by William Douglas in Uncategorized

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Calgary Flames, Frantz Jean, Fred Brathwaite, Hockey Canada, New York Islanders, St. Louis Blues, Sudashan Maharaj, Tampa Bay Lightning

Brooklyn is ready for Freddy.

Fred Brathwaite is the New York Islanders’ new goalie coach (Photo/ Matthew Murnaghan/Hockey Canada Images)

The New York Islanders Monday named retired National Hockey League goaltender Fred Brathwaite as the team’s new goalie coach.

“He’s ready for this next step and we look forward to him working with our organization’s goalies,” Islanders Head Coach Doug Weight said.

Brathwaite, 44, was goalie coach for Hockey Canada’s Under-18 team for the last three seasons. Before that, he coached goalies for Canada’s Under-20 program and for Adler Mannheim in the German Professional League during the 2013-14 season.

His former Hockey Canada students include NHL draftees Carter Hart, a 2016 Philadelphia Flyers second-round draft pick, Zach Fucale, a 2013 Montreal Canadiens third-round selection, and Eric Comrie, taken in the second-round in 2013 by the Winnipeg Jets.

“Fred’s experiences at just about every level of hockey make him a tremendous addition to our hockey club,” Weight said. “Not only has he has a solid NHL career, but he’s also worked with some of the top net-minders coming out of Hockey Canada.”

Embed from Getty Images

Brathwaite spent nine seasons in the NHL, occupying the net for the Edmonton Oilers, St. Louis Blues, Calgary Flames and Columbus Blue Jackets. He posted an NHL career record of 81 wins, 99 losses and 37 ties with a 2.73 goals-against average and .901 save percentage in 254 regular seasons games. He had 15 shutouts.

The well-traveled goalie also played for the Syracuse Crunch and Chicago Wolves of the American Hockey League, Ak Bars Kazan and Avangard Omsk of the Russian Superleague (now the Kontenental Hockey League) and Adler Mannheim of  Germany’s DEL. Brathwaite won Goaltender of the Year in the RSL in 2005-06 and Player of the Year in 2008-09 in the DEL with Adler.

He appeared in only one Stanley Cup Playoffs game, for the Blues in 2001-02, and was on the ice for only a minute. But Brathwaite did earn championship hardware during his North American playing days, winning a Memorial Cup with the Ontario Hockey League’s  Oshawa Generals in 1990 with a bruising young teammate named Eric Lindros.

Embed from Getty Images

Getting the Islanders job fulfills Brathwaite’s goal of returning to the big leagues as a coach.

“I would love to be an NHL goalie coach,” he told the Color of Hockey in June 2015 “And having this opportunity with Hockey Canada is helping me prepare for that. And it’s really not that bad paying dues when you end up getting the best kids in the country to work with.”

Brathwaite becomes the third goalie coach of color working for an NHL team. Sudarshan Maharaj runs the goalies for the Anaheim Ducks and Frantz Jean coaches for the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Former NHLer Fred Brathwaite has been hired by the #Isles as head goaltending coach. https://t.co/bg4stmMYR1

— InGoal Magazine (@InGoalMedia) July 10, 2017

Brathwaite replaces former NHL goalie Mike Dunham as the Isles’ netminder boss. The Brooklyn-based team ranked 23rd among the NHL’s 30 teams with a 2.90 goals-against average last season under Dunham.

Goalies Thomas Greiss, Jaroslav Halak, and Jean-Francois Berube surrendered 231 of the 238 goals that opposing teams scored in 2016-17.

Follow the Color of Hockey on Facebook or Twitter @ColorOfHockey.

 

 

 

 

 

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Ready for Freddy? Fred Brathwaite works toward becoming an NHL goalie coach

09 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by William Douglas in Uncategorized

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Braden Holtby, Calgary Flames, Chicago Blackhawks, Edmonton Oilers, Fred Brathwaite, Henrik Lundqvist, Hockey Canada, St. Louis Blues, Tampa Bay Lightning, Washington Capitals

Like many other retired National Hockey League players who want to remain part of the game, Fred Brathwaite is patiently paying his dues in hopes of getting back in the league as a coach.

But instead of the endless back-road bus rides that fledgling major junior and minor league hockey coaches usually endure, Brathwaite is doing his apprenticeship in the pressure-packed spotlight as goaltender consultant for Hockey Canada. And he’s doing it well.

Hockey Canada goalie coach Fred Brathwaite (Photo/ Matthew Murnaghan/Hockey Canada Images)

Hockey Canada goalie coach Fred Brathwaite (Photo/ Matthew Murnaghan/Hockey Canada Images)

Under his guidance, Canada’s goaltenders backstopped the country’s Under-20 team to a Gold Medal at the International Ice Hockey Federation Junior World Championship in Toronto/Montreal in January and a Bronze Medal at the IIHF’s Under-18 championship in Zug, Switzerland, last month.

“I would love to be an NHL goalie coach,” said Brathwaite, who played 254 games for the Edmonton Oilers, Calgary Flames, St. Louis Blues, and Columbus Blue Jackets over nine NHL seasons. “And having this opportunity with Hockey Canada is helping me prepare for that. And it’s really not that bad paying dues when you end up getting the best kids in the country to work with.”

Indeed. Zach Fucale, a Montreal Canadiens 2013 second-round draft pick who played for the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League’s  Quebec Remparts in 2014-15, and Eric Comrie, the Winnipeg Jets 2013 second-round pick who skated for the Western Hockey League’s Tri-City Americans, provided serious goaltending for Canada at the worlds.

Fucale appeared in five games at the world juniors, posting a 1.20 goals against average and .939 save percentage. Comrie played in two games and had a 1.50 goals-against average and 933 save percentage.

“I’m very fortunate and very proud to be working with Hockey Canada,” Brathwaite told me recently. “Anytime you get a chance to wear your country’s flag, it’s an honor. “There’s still a little bit more I can learn about being an NHL goalie coach. And having this opportunity with Hockey Canada is helping me prepare for that.”

Goalies Zach Fucale (left) and Eric Comrie (right) with goalie coach Fred  Brathwaite at 2015 IIHF World Junior Championship (Photo/ Matthew Murnaghan/Hockey Canada)

Goalies Zach Fucale (left) and Eric Comrie (right) with goalie coach Fred Brathwaite at 2015 IIHF World Junior Championship (Photo/ Matthew Murnaghan/Hockey Canada)

Brathwaite began preparing for a career transition in 2010-11 while he was playing for the Adler Mannheim Eagles of the Deutsche Eishockey Liga.  At 39, he wanted to play one more season. But when no good offers came along, the man who shares the same real name as legendary rapper Fab Five Freddy became Mannheim’s goalie coach.

He quickly learned that the change from player to coach isn’t an easy one. “It’s a little more difficult then I thought,” he said. “Before I could control what’s happening in a game by playing and now, sitting up in the stands, you have no control. You just hope the kids play well, the team plays well, and, hopefully, you’ve prepared them as well as you could.”

While in Germany, Brathwaite stayed in touch with Hockey Canada. As a goaltender for the Canadian national team in 1998-99 and member of Canada’s world championship squads in 1998-99 and 2000-01, he was familiar with the organization’s brain trust and had no problems in being a pest about employment.

“Every time I would see those guys I’d keep bugging them, asking them when are they going to give me an opportunity,” he told me.

Opportunity knocked when Scott Salmond, Hockey Canada’s vice president for hockey operations, national teams, called  in 2013 and “kind of offered me a job,” Brathwaite recalled

“I wouldn’t say it fell in my lap by any means because I kept bugging them and bugging them until they kind of gave in,” he said.

In Brathwaite, Hockey Canada tapped a former goaltender who won a Memorial Cup with the Oshawa Generals in 1990 with a bruising young teammate named Eric Lindros; posted a 81-91-37 NHL record with 15 shutouts and a 2.73 goals-against average; and became a standout goalie in Russia and Germany. He was the German league’s Most Valuable Player in 2009. Not bad for a player who wasn’t drafted by an NHL team.

As Hockey Canada’s goaltending consultant, Brathwaite scouts and evaluates goalies for all of Canada’s world teams and provides on-ice coaching during international tournaments.

Fred Brathwaite at work at Canada's World Junior Selection Camp (Photo/Matthew Murnaghan/Hockey Canada Images).

Fred Brathwaite at work at Canada’s World Junior Selection Camp (Photo/Matthew Murnaghan/Hockey Canada Images).

“At tournaments like that my job is keeping them (goalies) sharp, keeping them focused, and try to keep them as relaxed as possible – not to let the highs get too high and the lows get too low,” he said.

Sounds simple enough, but goalies at almost every hockey level will tell you that the position – once dismissively considered the place to stick the kid who couldn’t skate – has become one of the most complex and most scrutinized in the game.

Back in the day when Braithwaite first strapped on the pads, it was “Goalie, heal thyself” in terms of development and fixing flaws in a goaltender’s game. Most NHL head coaches either didn’t have sufficient knowledge about the position or lacked the temperament to deal with sometimes-temperamental netminders.

“When I played in Edmonton, Billy Ranford and I, we were our own goalie coach,” Brathwaite said. “Goalie coaching just wasn’t a big thing back then.”

Full-time goalie coaches in the NHL were unheard of until Warren Strelow joined the Washington Capitals’ coaching staff in 1983. Today, nearly every NHL team employs a full-time goalie coach or consultant.

Heck, even a pee wee hockey team might have a goalie coach these days.  “A lot of these junior kids that we get on the worlds teams, they probably have a guy they use in the summer, a guy on their junior team,” Brathwaite said. “And now, they’re drafted in the NHL, so they have an NHL guy as well. And then they have me. It’s a big focus now.”

Fred Brathwaite played an NHL career-high 61 games for the Calgary Flames in 1999-00. (Photo courtesy of Calgary Flames Hockey Club).

Fred Brathwaite played an NHL career-high 61 games for the Calgary Flames in 1999-00. (Photo courtesy of Calgary Flames Hockey Club).

With nearly 20 years of professional hockey experience in North America and Europe under his skates, Brathwaite is uniquely qualified to share knowledge about playing in the NHL and overseas with young goalies.

“A lot of things are very similar, especially now,” he said. “Back in the day, the NHL was more crashing the net. The goalies were a little more aggressive back then. But now you’re seeing guys like (Braden) Holtby in Washington and (New York Rangers’ Henrik) Lundqvist playing a little deeper in the net. That’s kind of more of a European style, sitting back and not being so aggressive.”

Brathwaite summed up his playing style back in the day with one word: “Messy.”

“Kind of like Martin Brodeur where you didn’t know what I’d do,” he said. “Sometimes I might stand up, sometimes I might go down. The way I played, I pretty much competed, battled. I had to be able to read the game, and that was something I was able to do.”

With Hockey Canada, Brathwaite is trying to get a bead on how other countries are developing their goalies. He and former NHL goalies Corey Hirsch and Rick Wamsley traveled to Sweden and Finland Sweden last fall to see what those countries are doing to produce talents like Lundqvist and Renne.

“What we noticed is they’re just more organized as a group in the way they’re doing the goalie structure,” Brathwaite said. “In North America, there are just some many different goalie coaches all over the place. Something that we would like to try is to get everybody on the same page: the kids learn how to skate and catch, do all the basics and fundamentals first before they start to get into different styles.”

While some in the hockey community fret that Europe is producing better goaltenders, Brathwaite isn’t worried. He noted that two North American goalies – Canadian-born Corey Crawford with the Chicago Blackhawks and Denver native Ben Bishop of the Tampa Bay Lightning – are playing for the Stanley Cup.

“I believe Canadian goaltending is doing very good,” he said. “But at the end of the day, people are talking about Lundqvist or Pekka Renne. But we have Carey Price. And Braden Holtby had an excellent year.”

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