Goalies of past who inspired love for position discussed by NHL.com

Welcome to NHL Goalie Week. NHL Social is celebrating the goaltending position this week, from Aug. 26 to Sept. 1, reveling in the uniqueness and artistry of the puck-stoppers behind the masks. In that spirit, here is a look by NHL.com’s staff at the goalies who made each of them fall in love with the position.

Ed Belfour

I wasn’t into hockey as a kid. It wasn’t until I moved to Texas and helped cover the 2000 Stanley Cup Playoffs that I was hooked. Of course, that meant watching the Dallas Stars defend the Stanley Cup and the great Belfour. His Western Conference Final duel with Colorado Avalanche great Patrick Roy was especially memorable. Hearing the Reunion Arena crowd chanting “Eddie! Eddie!” after a big save or during a timeout, it was amazing. I loved Belfour’s style and his edginess. Yes, I know there were a few times when he crossed the line. But he was a big part of the reason why I fell in love with hockey, and why I’m still covering it. -- Tracey Myers, staff writer

Martin Biron

The quirky goalie stereotype fit Biron perfectly and I had the privilege of seeing it daily during the three seasons he spent with the Philadelphia Flyers. Biron used the same pair of skates he wore in junior for the entirety of his 16-season NHL career, which began in 1995. By the time he got to Philadelphia late in the 2006-07 season, they were held together by a ton of tape and some hope. I can still hear layer after layer after layer of the tape Marty would have to unravel after each practice or game. He'd end up with a ball that nearly was the size of his head. And there was always fear in the eyes of Harry Bricker, one of the Flyers' equipment managers, who was in charge of skate maintenance. Biron was great to be around, and any time I hear a player ripping off tape I think of Marty and his skates. -- Adam Kimelman, deputy managing editor

Martin Brodeur

When I first started watching hockey, Brodeur was a rookie with the New Jersey Devils. Living on Long Island, my parents would take me to the Nassau Coliseum whenever the Devils played there, but just my luck, a goalie who played 75-plus games a season would usually get the night off against the Islanders. So one year, we made the trek to the Meadowlands where I would finally get to see him play in person -- or so I thought. New Jersey decided to start John Vanbiesbrouck. He did have a shutout to help the Devils win their 13th straight game, but my lasting memory from that game is the backup goalie. Eventually I would see Brodeur play in person and it was such a different experience than watching on TV. He made saves against future Hall of Famers look effortless and was a constant in goal for two decades. As a kid, I could recite each of his stats every season, but I didn't realize at the time I was watching one of the greats who would eventually set the NHL wins (691) and shutouts (125) records. -- David Satriano, staff writer

Sean Burke

I was 10 years old and living in North Jersey. I had friends who were fans of the New York Rangers and one who was a diehard New York Islanders fan, but the Devils were our state’s team so that was my team. We had nothing to brag about as Devils’ fans (Rangers’ fans didn’t really have much either except longevity, by the way), but here comes Burke straight from the Olympics. I celebrated my 10th birthday at the old arena in East Rutherford, my parents taking me to see the Devils and Washington Capitals on March 2, 1988. Burke made his NHL debut. He gave up two goals in relief of Alain Chevrier. Burke led the Devils to the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time that season. He led them to the Wales Conference Final. He helped make it a magical run, putting hockey on the map in our state. He made goaltending cool. He made saves fun. He eventually left New Jersey, traded to Hartford on Aug. 28, 1992. But that brought Bobby Holik to New Jersey. The 1995 Devils with Holik, Mike Peluso and Randy McKay, the “Crash Line,” became my favorite team of all time. I guess I have Burke to thank for that too. -- Dan Rosen, senior writer

Gerry Cheevers

I remember the moment I decided I wanted to be a goalie. I was 7, sitting at home sitting in front of the fireplace, the Boston Bruins were on TV, in black and white, and the camera panned to the goalie hidden behind his shell mask. This was no ordinary shell mask, though. No, Cheevers had the equipment manager mark the mask with stitches each time it had been struck with a puck. The result was a gruesome sight, a testament to the danger -- and folly -- of the position. Unlike the other skaters, who played without helmets and were recognizable, Cheevers was a man of mystery. He was a masked superhero in the sport I loved. My disappointment was palpable when I asked to play goalie and was handed a bird-cage mask and not the half shell-style of my hero, but I played goalie each winter for the next decade. -- Shawn P. Roarke, senior director of editorial

Ken Dryden

Like a scene out of the cult flick “Wayne’s World,” road hockey occupied a huge chunk of my childhood from age 6 to 16. When actor Mike Myers was asked once by David Letterman where the idea for the film sprouted, he said it was a satirical look at his youth in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough. Given that I’m also from there, we are the same age, he attended the next high school from mine and was a classmate of one of my best friends, welcome to Zize’s World. And that meant road hockey almost every night in front of my house, the perfect setting to limit pesky traffic since it was a dead-end street. I loved playing net, and the first time I saw Dryden, the Montreal Canadiens goalie, in his signature pose of folding his arms and leaning on his stick, I thought it was the coolest thing and adopted it for myself. From that moment, whenever we’d gather for games, I’d quickly yell out “I’m Dryden.” His influence lasted for a few years until acrobatic Mike Palmateer became the Maple Leafs starter. After that, well, it became “I’m Palmy!” -- Mike Zeisberger, staff writer

Glen Hanlon

I would sometimes play goalie in street and floor hockey when I was growing up and, as a lefty, I caught with my right hand. So, after Hanlon was traded to the New York Rangers in 1983 and I saw he caught with his right hand too, he immediately became my favorite goalie. (I also followed left-handed quarterbacks such as Ken Stabler -- the first lefty QB to win the Super Bowl -- and pitchers.) My Hanlon fandom was cemented when I attended a game at Madison Square Garden a couple years later and, after he broke his stick blade during warmups, by luck, he handed what was left of his stick over the glass to me. He signed it for me after the game and I still have it almost 40 years later. -- Tom Gulitti, staff writer

Denis Lemieux

He didn’t play in the NHL. He didn’t even really exist. He was a fictional character in the movie “Slap Shot.” But when I was getting into hockey as a kid, I watched the movie as if eating forbidden fruit, because my parents didn’t want me to see it. (Can’t imagine why.) I was hooked by the hilarity in the opening scene, as Lemieux explained penalties in his French-Canadian accent. Growing up in the Detroit area, I howled later when he yelled into the phone, “Call Detroit. Tell them (bleep). … Trade me right (bleeping) now!” I’m laughing even now as I type this. -- Nicholas J. Cotsonika, columnist

Mike Palmateer

One of the most entertaining goalies I’ve seen, Palmateer is my favorite NHL player. He played eight seasons, six with the Toronto Maple Leafs, which is where I first saw him play. I fell in love right away. Every shot was an adventure and he relied on athleticism to stop the puck. At 5-foot-9, 170 pounds he wasn’t a very intimidating presence, but he would do whatever it took to keep the puck out of the net, which included the two-pad stack, butterfly and a lightning-quick glove hand. I can still hear the voice of the legendary Canadian broadcaster Bob Cole calling games on Hockey Night in Canada in the late 70s and early 80s, “Palmateer robs him.” It was a phrase I would repeat often when it was my turn to play goal, playing street hockey with my friends. -- Derek Van Diest, Staff Writer

Pete Peeters

During high school, I not only fell in love with hockey, but I fell in love with the Boston Bruins. Looking back, I think the start of my fandom came during the 1982-83 Eastern Conference Final, when the Bruins took on the New York Islanders in games broadcast on free TV on Ch. 9 in New York. The spoked-B, Boston Garden, the passion of guys like Terry O’Reilly and the play of Ray Bourque really drew me in, but there was something about Peeters that made him stand above the rest. On Christmas of 1983, I asked for a Bruins jersey, which Santa delivered. I then went to the sporting-goods store in town and had 1 PEETERS ironed on the back. When I wore it to school during my senior year, I heard other guys make fun of me for “wearing someone else’s name on my back.” (Clearly I was ahead of my time). But I didn’t care. Peeters was the first goalie I followed religiously. He was the guy I pretended to be whenever I donned the Mylec street hockey pads. I still remember being upset that my parents wouldn’t take me to the 1984 NHL All-Star Game at Brendan Byrne Arena, and was even more upset when Peeters made a ridiculous save (I was listening to the game on the radio). I sort of lost interest in Peeters when he went to the Capitals in 1985 and I went to college, but there was a time in the early 1980s when Peeters was my guy and my favorite goalie. -- Bill Price, Editor-in-Chief

Rogie Vachon

Word was that the Montreal Canadiens were going to demote Vachon, my first hockey hero, to the minors in 1967. This 10-year-old, a huge fan following the rookie goalie’s impressive Stanley Cup Playoff run the previous spring, was having none of it. So I wrote the first fan letter of my life, telling “Mr. Vachon” not to let the Canadiens return him to the Houston Apollos. A week later, in the mail, was Rogie’s team-issued picture postcard -- "Don't worry, I'll never let them send me down," he wrote in a paragraph-long reassuring reply. The postcard went straight into my scrapbook, long before our friendship began to develop in the years that followed. For my Montreal newspaper for more than a decade from the early 1990s, I championed Rogie’s case for long-overdue Hockey Hall of Fame induction; in 2016, upon his election, we flew together from Montreal to Toronto for his enshrinement and I harvested more of his stories. I wrote that feature for NHL.com in what would be my second fan letter to a boyhood hero, this one written nearly a half-century after the first. -- Dave Stubbs, columnist