The Weight of the World
Dan Cloutier knows that he won't be considered an elite NHL goaltender until he enjoys playoff success
Gary Mason, Vancouver Sun
CANADA.COM
They know how to unnerve a goalie in Detroit, Dan Cloutier figures.
There he was, standing in his crease, waiting for the first game of last year's playoffs to get under way at Joe Louis Arena, a runny-nosed kid with two playoff games on his resum?, staring down the ice at the other netminder, the guy who'd won the Hart trophy twice, the Vezina six times, who singlehandedly took his team to the Stanley Cup finals a couple years earlier, when the PA guy began announcing the Wings starting lineup.
"At centre, Steve Yzerman ...
"At left wing, Brendan Shanahan ...
"At right wing, Sergei Fedorov ...
"On defence, Nicklas Lidstrom ...
"Also on defence, Chris Chelios ..."
That is when Dan Cloutier, his legs shaking uncontrollably, his heart pounding faster than it had ever pounded before, managed a smile.
"Not a bad starting lineup," he thought to himself.
Now Cloutier is sitting in a Yaletown caf?, sipping on a grande latt?, still shaking his head about that night in Detroit.
"They're the only team in the league that announces the starting lineup when the other team is on the ice," Cloutier is saying. "But I can see why they do it. They've got quite a collection of hardware on that team and it can get into your mind a bit if you allow it to."
Ironically, Cloutier and the Canucks would win the first two games in Detroit in round one last season before dropping the next four, everyone's turning point being the 100-foot slapshot by Lidstrom that Cloutier whiffed on and which seemed to give the Wings new life and ultimately the series.
No one who really knows hockey, however, believes that it was one shot by one defenceman that did the Canucks in. One bad goal doesn't explain Vancouver's rapid disintegration after the Game 3 loss. Nonetheless, it instantly became part of Dan Cloutier's story, part of his playoff history, something he would have to deal with and eventually conquer before he was able to move and write the kind of playoff story that cast him in a better light.
As the 2002-03 campaign got under way, it looked like Cloutier was continuing to build on his previous season's success. Technically, he looked much stronger, getting himself in solid position for first- and second-shot saves, which was in contrast to the Dan Cloutier who first arrived in Vancouver, often diving headfirst to make difficult second saves even more difficult. At the beginning of this season he was often the reason the Canucks won and was the team's early MVP.
But a knee injury late in the year put a halt to Cloutier's solid work between the pipes and put him out of action. He struggled to regain his form upon his return and just when it seemed he had finally found his old game, the one that won him plaudits from around the NHL, he injured the knee again.
Goaltending was the biggest question mark for the Canucks heading into this year's playoffs. Now it is a question mark that is twice as big. That Cloutier will have to play with some pain and discomfort is now a given. The unknown, however, is how he will play with his problems.
For his part, Cloutier is keeping a brave face. He insists that last year's playoffs against Detroit and his introduction to the post-season a year earlier against Colorado -- both teams that would go on to win the Stanley Cup those years -- have made him a better goaltender. This year, Cloutier should benefit from the fact the Canucks did not draw a first-round opponent, the St. Louis Blues, destined to win the Cup.
"But we would have to face those great teams in the second round anyway," Cloutier says, tugging his baseball hat down a little further on his forehead. "But in the playoffs there are no easy rounds. You never know. There are always upsets. So you have to prepare the same way for everyone, regardless of their reputation."
There is, however, nothing that quite prepares you for the playoffs. Everything, everything, is just that much bigger, that much crazier, that much more insane -- on the ice and in the stands. The players play with an abandon that isn't there during the regular season. When they crash the net, Cloutier says, they crash the net harder. When they fire a rebound, Cloutier says, they fire a rebound harder.
"I don't know if the other positions are the same but I find it's like playing in a different league altogether," says the 26-year-old netminder. "One goal means so much more. Every little aspect of the game is that much more fun."
Fun? Did he really say fun?
Cloutier insists that it is fun, even for him, a poor goalie, who is likely to be blamed for a team's early exit for the playoffs and be the toast of the town should they win. But fun? It never looks like fun, especially before the game, when the national anthems are being sung and the players are so nervous they can't stop their bodies from anxiously swaying back and forth as they stand at the bench.
If you've ever watched the video that the Canucks play before the start of home games, you'll recall that near the end of it the scene shifts from the regular season to last year's playoffs against the Wings. In one gripping vignette, Cloutier is seen skating towards his net to start the game with the crowd at GM Place going absolutely bonkers in the background.
Then Cloutier makes the sign of the cross.
It is a powerful image. Not only because of what it conveys about the athlete, and how he must be feeling, but in that single gesture is the inescapable symbolism of hockey as religion in this country. Cloutier says he makes the sign of the cross before every game, something he started in junior to help calm himself down.
"I also say a prayer during the national anthem," he says. "That's also something that helps settle me a bit."
Which is every goalie's greatest challenge come the playoffs, not just Cloutier's. Calming oneself down. A goalie who is flopping around, a goalie who has abandoned the fundamentals of his position, is generally a goalie who is trying to do too much.
Or a goalie who is nervous.
Beyond words.
"I was better this year at calming myself down," says Cloutier. "But I remember the first time we played the Red Wings this season. Everyone was making such a big deal of the rematch and all that. In the first period I definitely found myself trying to do too much, trying to make some kind of statement, I guess.
"Then I just calmed down and said: 'I've been working on certain things for two years now and that's what I've got to stick with. I was thinking I needed to play extra great and other stuff. But you have a plan and you have to stick with it. That's how you become more consistent. Even if you have a bad game. You have to remember that whatever you were doing worked for the first 20 games or so, one bad game doesn't change that. But you have to keep reminding yourself that."
But Cloutier is also mindful that the playoffs are different. It's easy to put one bad game, one bad goal behind you during the regular season. Especially when you have a team in front of you that can easily score five, six, seven goals if needed. But all that changes in the post-season, when goals become harder to find than cheap gas.
"One mistake could cost you the game," Cloutier admits. "If I let in a bad goal in the first period of a regular season game and we win nobody is talking about it. In the playoffs, everything changes. The checking is so tight you aren't going to get the same opportunities to get that goal back as you do in the regular season. It's added pressure but it comes with the position, I guess."
As does the extra scrutiny the position receives. Especially in this town.
Cloutier is smart. He doesn't listen to AM radio. He doesn't read the newspapers. When he was injured he allowed himself to go to the newsstands a few times to see what reporters had to say about his backup Peter Skudra. Cloutier was shocked at how hard the press was on him and couldn't read any more.
It's not like he wasn't prepared for it though. As soon as he arrived in Vancouver he was warned the city was a goalie graveyard. This is where good goalies came to die or get traded to another team that they usually ended up starring on, so happy were they to be out of here.
"I remember the first day I got here I was thinking, 'Wow, I haven't even played a game yet and they're waiting for me to have a bad game so they can jump all over me.' That's when I said I'm not going to pay attention to this stuff."
Yet, there is no one more appreciative of great goaltending than Canucks' fans either. They will happily chant your name after a great save, as long as you have given them something over and above the ordinary up to then. Former Canucks backup Bob Essensa can probably still hear his name being roared by the Vancouver crowd during his time here. And before him there was Kirk McLean and before him Richard Brodeur.
They yearn to chant again.
When Dan Cloutier was a kid he watched the Stanley Cup playoffs like most every hockey-playing boy his age. But he was always focused on one position.
He remembers Patrick Roy's heroics for Montreal in 1986. He also remembers all those overtime victories that Roy was a part of the year the Canadiens won their last Cup in 1993. He remembers thinking how loud the crowds were as the players skated on to the ice for the drop of the puck.
Mostly, he remembers thinking how amazing it would be to play in one of those games himself, to be that goalie gliding towards his crease, his legs barely able to keep him up.
Now he is.
"It's actually a really great feeling to know that as a kid you dreamed of doing this and now you're doing it," says Cloutier, smiling. "It's actually a weird feeling. It's like I can't believe I'm actually here. But it's the greatest feeling a hockey player can have. There's nothing like the playoffs. Nothing at all."