True or False: Goalies are Weird

The question of goalie weirdness is a matter of whether you embrace the gray matter of life.
If you want yes-or-no, true-or-false clarity across culture and society, that's tougher than seeing Connor McDavid or Nathan McKinnon bearing down on your net for a breakaway attempt.
The same goes for determining the simple answer to whether goalies are weird or not.

Consider Hall of Fame goalie Ken Dryden. Growing up in Hamilton, Ontario, a seven-year-old Dryden idolized a goalie named Johnny Albani playing for the junior hockey powerhouse Toronto Marlies. Albani would lead his team out to the ice for home games, then promptly drop a puck from his catch-glove to shoot it off the protective glass to the right of his net. At 25, Dryden debuted in goal with the Montreal Canadiens for a late-season game and promptly starred in the ensuing 1971 Stanley Cup Playoffs as a rookie. Dryden always made sure, home or away, to take his team's first shot during warmups.
Six Stanley Cup titles later, the superstition seemed more successful than weird. What's more, Dryden finished law school during his Montreal career and even took a season away from the sport to clerk for a law firm in Toronto. Weird or impressive or both?

The notion of goalie weirdness runs deep in hockey's culture. Patrick Roy (pronounced 'rwah') is on the short of all-time greatest goaltenders, winning four Stanley Cups, two each in Montreal and Colorado during 19 NHL seasons. He recorded a 2.54 goals-against average during 1,029 NHL games. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2006. He was unwavering about his habit of talking to goal posts on the ice. Reporters, of course, asked why: "Because they are my friends," Roy said. Yep, weird, but effective.
Glenn Hall played for the Detroit Red Wings, Chicago Blackhawks and St. Louis Blues (pairing in the Blues goal during the late 1960s with fellow legend and Hockey Hall of Famer Jacques Plante). He won a Stanley Cup in 1961 with Chicago, holds the unbreakable goalie record of 552 consecutive games played (including playoffs) and was the first player selected by St. Louis in the 1967 NHL Expansion Draft that doubled the league's total from six to 12.
Historic? Yes. Weird? Not until you delve into Hall's pre-game routine. He would vomit before every game. In fact, if he didn't feel ill, he would be disappointed: "I always felt I played better if I was physically sick before the game. If I wasn't sick, I felt I hadn't done everything I could to try to win."
Hall came off as nervous during his playing days because of his pre-game routine, but anyone with the privilege of meeting or interviewing Hall these days knows differently. He is a delightful man with a quick smile and kind words. Not that he doesn't still have a superstition or two left in his playbook. He was delighted by the Blues' Stanley Cup title in 2019, so happy for his final NHL team winning its first championship in 52 seasons. But he admits to "turning in" when St. Louis was leading 2-0 in the clinching game.
"I knew that lead wasn't safe," Hall told Dave Stubbs of NHL.com, "but my watching it wasn't going to change anything. I was so happy this morning to see the score and the highlights on the news.

"This is so very good for everyone in St. Louis. It wasn't easy, but then it's not supposed to be. It's not as much fun if it's easy. I'm very, very happy for everyone involved -- the ownership, management, the coaches, players and especially the fans."
Kevin Constantine played goalie up through the NCAA college level, making his biggest mark as a head coach, including seven seasons in the NHL and eight seasons over two four-year stretches with the Western Hockey League's Everett Silvertips. He is currently coaching in the Korean professional league. During a 2016 interview with the Everett Herald's Jesse Geleynse, the always entertaining and informative Constantine made the case goalie weirdness is "all nurture" and zero nature.
"When I grew up the saying was, 'Go to the playground and find the weirdest kid and that kid can probably be your goalie, because goalies are weird,'" Constantine said. "And then as I went through being a goalie, observing the goalies, being part of the fraternity, I don't think it's that at all. I think we take very normal athletes and we make them a goalie, and the process of doing that makes you weird. It makes you different."
"You don't get to come back to the bench and talk about how things are going [in the game]. You're just isolated and that willing(ness) to go in harm's way and the isolation you play with, I think if you do that repetitively you become a bit of a strange duck. So yeah, goalies are a little weird."
But Constantine sees the gray of the goalie weirdness matter too. Maybe some of the pre-game rituals provide order to the physical chaos hockey goalies face on the ice. Eddie Belfour, another Hall-of-Fame goalie, was livid if any teammate touched his equipment before a game, striving for a sanctuary at his locker room spot.

"For me it's the hardest job in hockey from a mental standpoint because forwards' mistakes turn into defensemen covering for them, and defensemen mistakes turn into goalies covering for them," Constantine said. "Goalies' mistakes turn into a red light going on and everyone in the building knowing you screwed up ... I think goalies are pretty mentally strong people."
Then there is Gilles Gratton, not a Hall-of-Famer but good enough to play 47 NHL games and another 161 games in the World Hockey Association, which later folded and merged some teams into the NHL. Among other beliefs, Gratton claimed his lived past lives and his role as a professional goalie was "punishment" for previous missteps in his former selves. He adorned his goalie mask with cat imagery even though he played for the New York Rangers and St. Louis, neither having anything to do with felines. He refused to play one night because the "moon was in the wrong place." Another time he explained the abdominal pain he was feeling derived from his life as a soldier in the Spanish Inquisition when he was lanced in the stomach. OK, weird, audaciously weird.
But New York Rangers Hall-of-Famer Rod Gilbert said Gratton was "the most talented goalie he ever played with." Goalie-teammate and long-time NHL executive John Davidson tells of the times Gratton could walk into a room and play the piano exquisitely with Gratton insisting he had never taken on lesson on the instrument. Well, at least in this lifetime.