As Jonathan Quick approaches NHL goalie wins record, USA Hockey aims for domination

Jonathan Quick is one victory away from making American hockey history.

His next win will be No. 392 in the NHL, one more than current record-holder Ryan Miller and every other U.S.-born goalie. That, along with his three Stanley Cup championships, his Conn Smythe Trophy and his two Jennings Trophies, stake Quick’s claim as one of the greatest American goalies, if not the greatest.

It’s fitting that he’s set to break the record — as soon as Saturday against the Arizona Coyotes — wearing the same red, white and blue New York Rangers sweater as the goalie he idolized growing up, fellow countryman Mike Richter.

Richter is sixth-all time in wins among U.S. goalies, retiring with a Stanley Cup championship, a silver medal in the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics and a gold medal in the 1996 World Cup of Hockey. Richter grew up idolizing Jim Craig, who backstopped the 1980 U.S. Olympic team to the “Miracle on Ice.” Before that, Craig was inspired by Jack McCartan and his gold medal-winning performance for the United States in the 1960 Squaw Valley Olympic games.

Quick never captured Olympic gold. He did win silver as the third goalie in the 2010 Vancouver games, and played for Team USA in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, but best-on-best international competition didn’t exist for most of Quick’s career.

With the tantalizing possibility of best-on-best returning to the Olympics soon, the United States figures enter them with its best generation of netminders yet. Quick, at age 38, isn’t part of that group, but he no doubt has served as an inspiration for the next generation, and never in NHL history have there been more American goalies near the top of the NHL ranks.

Connor Hellebuyck is set to win his second Vezina Trophy with the best season of his already prestigious career. His closest competition could be California native Thatcher Demko, who has been brilliant for the Canucks. Throw in Jeremy Swayman, Jake Oettinger and John Gibson, and the United States is overflowing with talent in the crease.

What has gone so right for the U.S. goalie development program lately?

“I’d like to think that at some point soon that, across the hockey world, people are going to say, ‘You know what, the best goalies are coming from the United States,’ and I think we’re moving in that direction,” David Lassonde, the U.S. national junior team goalie coach, told The Athletic.

Lassonde has coached U.S. goalies for years and at multiple levels, from the U-18 team to the Olympics. He and Steven Thompson, manager of goaltending development for USA Hockey, have helped shape the country’s approach to coaching the position over the last few years, with an emphasis on the mental side of goaltending over technical positions.

“We want our goalies to look at a piece of video, and watch it with the proper lens,” Lassonde explained. “If they can read plays, understand tactics and understand how the group in front of them is playing, it’s going to help them with their save selections. I think that’s one of the things that I have tried to stress in my role, is for goalies to become a student of the position.”

Another major focus for the U.S. goalie development program has been allowing goalies to maintain their individuality, rather than molding them into a singular technique.

“One thing we’ve been really proud of with our goalie education course is allowing for individual goalies to play their own style, and not trying to create this cookie-cutter performance-based model,” said Thompson, whose coaching career started at the University of Alaska-Anchorage. “Sometimes you can identify what nationality a goalie is just by the way they play, and we’re kind of hoping that the melting pot that the USA is, you’ll also see it in net. You might have 15 goalies in the top 20 in the league, and hopefully they all play a little bit different based on their size, skill and strengths.”

There’s no better example than Quick himself. The first time Lassonde saw Quick was nearly two decades ago when Lassonde was coaching the University of New Hampshire against Quick’s UMass Minutemen.

“What I remember of him was, he was a little undersized, extremely explosive and athletic,” Lassonde recalled. “At times unorthodox in his play, structure and style, but he found a way to stop pucks, which at the end of the day that’s what you want your goalie to do.”

All these years later, nothing has changed. Quick has continued adapting his game to the ever-changing style of hockey in the NHL, but he stayed true to his own style. Even this season, at 38 years old, Quick is still crouching low and lying the paddle of his stick along the ice as he vaults from side to side. It doesn’t always look pretty, but it’s stopped a lot of pucks over the years.

Looking at the current crop of goalies, they certainly have a more traditional style than Quick, but Hellebuyck, Demko, Oettinger, Swayman and Gibson all have unique ways of goaltending.

“That’s what we’re trying to recommend to our goalie coaches,” Thompson said. “A lot of them want to know, ‘What’s the secret sauce? Where should they hold their glove? What should their stance be?’ We just keep telling them, it depends. It’s not a fun answer, but we’re hoping they get to know their individual athlete, allow those athletes to explore their game, and not feel like they have to play an exact certain way if they’re ever going to make it.

“It’s not easy to do it this way. It’s not easy to let the athletes figure it out. As a coach, you sometimes don’t feel like you’re doing much. As a parent, you don’t feel like your coach is doing much, because you’re not seeing them micro-manage the goalies every move. We just feel very strongly that at the end of the day, the goalie has to be the one to solve the puzzle, when too often, historically, we’ve been solving those puzzles for our goalies. Although they look great in practice when you do that, when the bright lights turn on, they’re not able to perform without their coach in their ear telling them exactly where the puck is going to be before it gets there.”

The future of U.S. goaltending appears bright at the moment. Quick’s stay atop the all-time wins list may be brief if the current group maintains its current pace. Here’s how the top five currently looks for wins among U.S.-born goalies.

Now, here’s the list of active U.S. goalies. Hellebuyck still has a long way to go to catch Quick, but at only 30 years old, he has plenty of time — as do Demko and Oettinger.

At the end of Quick’s 30-year-old season, he had 252 wins, so Hellebuyck is well clear of that number. Considering that the aging curve for goalies happens later than for skaters, Hellebuyck has an excellent chance at eventually becoming the all-time wins leader for the U.S. In his eight full seasons as a starter, Hellebuyck has averaged 34.66 wins per 82 games. He would only need to maintain that rate for four more seasons to pass Quick’s current win total by the age of 34.

With 115 wins, Demko is behind where Quick was at that stage of his career (176 wins at age 28), but Demko became a full-time starter later in his career. If the Canucks’ winning season is any indication of how the next few will go, Demko could certainly throw his name into that conversation.

This chart by The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn shows Hellebuyck’s projected goals saved above expected (GSAx) as he enters his 30s. Obviously, GSAx doesn’t directly correlate to wins, but this gives us a good idea of how many years we can expect Hellebuyck to remain a strong starter. Based on these projections Hellebuyck will be above average until he’s 35 or 36, which gives him plenty of time to chase down Quick.

Like Hellebuyck, Oettinger is also ahead of Quick’s pace at this stage of his career. The 25-year-old Minnesota native has already totaled 106 wins, 10 ahead of Quick at that age.

By the end of these goalies’ careers, it’s entirely possible the top-five list for all-time wins will look completely different.

As well as the U.S. goalies are trending, the people at USA Hockey still aren’t satisfied. They’re pleased with the number of elite American netminders at the moment, but still hope for much more depth around the NHL. The program started its “51 in 30” initiative in 2016, with the goal to have American goalies accounting for 51 percent of NHL ice time by 2030. It’s an incredibly lofty goal. When USA Hockey hired its first full-time goalie coach in 2007, there were only 11 American goalies in the NHL, accounting for only 11.4 percent of the ice time.

Those numbers have slowly climbed over the last 17 years, peaking at 23.5 percent of the total ice time in the 2017-18 season. This season, 20 American goalies have played in the NHL. Along with the top players already mentioned, Charlie Lindgren is having the best year of his career in Washington, Joey Daccord had a breakout season in Seattle and Anthony Stolarz has been excellent in Florida. Young American goalies such as Joseph Woll, Cayden Primeau and Dustin Wolf are breaking into the league as well.

They’ve all accounted for 21.7 percent of the total league ice time, which still leaves plenty of room for improvement to achieve the “51 in 30” goal.

“I’m hoping this is just the start,” Thompson said. “I will say, this year, we have really good numbers as far as high-performance goes, but we still don’t have that depth that we’re looking for. We’re hoping that we’re going to have a lot more goalies playing minutes.”

Whether they reach the goal or not, it’s clear USA Hockey has closed the gap between itself and Canada, and established itself as one of the best goalie-producing nations in the world.

“We’re hoping that between the success we’re seeing there and the attention that it’s been getting, that it will catalyze the country and just really encourage people to either continue to do what they’ve been doing, pulling on the rope, or if they haven’t maybe this will prove to them that it’s been working and they can join in,” Thompson said.

This summer, USA Hockey will hold its first-ever national goaltending symposium in Saint Paul, Minn. The four-day event (May 30 to June 2) will feature professional, Division I college and junior goalie coaches, as well as Olympic alums, NHL alums and current PWHL players. It’s USA Hockey’s first attempt to get all of its best and brightest in the crease under one roof to share ideas and brainstorm the future of the position.

The final key to USA Hockey’s improved goalie development program is the buy-in from current and former NHL players, such as Canucks backup Casey DeSmith, who volunteered to help out with the national goalie camp last July. DeSmith was there to speak to the 15-year-old goalies, but ended up throwing the pads on to teach them in person on the ice.

“That brings joy to me, when I see pros willing to give back to the next generation of goalies,” Lassonde said. “Just think about those (2008-born) goalies. There they are on the ice with a goalie who’s played in the NHL, who put his equipment on to demonstrate something to you rather than a 60-year-old guy like myself. The kids love it.”

Quick won’t be there this May. He’s hoping to be in the middle of a deep playoff run with the Rangers at that point of the summer, chasing his fourth championship. By then, he’ll be the country’s all-time wins leader, still writing the final chapter of his historic career. There will be plenty of time for him to inspire future goalies off the ice. For now, he’s still inspiring them on it.

(Top photo of Jonathan Quick: Patrick Smith / Getty Images)