Resch, Holtby share Saskatchewan roots, NHL success

Legendary hockey reporter Stan Fischler writes a weekly scrapbook for NHL.com. Fischler, known as "The Hockey Maven," shares his humor and insight with readers each Wednesday.
This week he offers the monthly feature "Then and Now," which compares a current NHL player with one from the past who played the same position. In this case, it's a pair of Saskatchewan-born goalies, Glenn "Chico" Resch and Braden Holtby.

When it comes to producing goalies, the province of Saskatchewan has plenty to be proud of.
Glenn Hall
, a native of Humboldt, holds a never-to-be-broken record of having played in 502 consecutive games -- all without a mask -- on his way to the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Chuck Rayner
of Sutherland not only is in the Hall of Fame but was voted winner of the
Hart Trophy
as League MVP in 1949-50 despite playing on a sub-.500 New York Rangers team. Had the
Conn Smythe Trophy
, awarded to the most valuable player in the Stanley Cup Final, existed in 1950, he'd likely have won that as well after getting the overmatched Rangers into double overtime in Game 7 of the Cup Final against the Detroit Red Wings. Hall of Famer
Johnny Bower
and 2006 Conn Smythe winner
Cam Ward
are two more of the
40 Saskatchewan-born goalies
who've played in the NHL.
Two Cup-winning goalies who played three decades apart,
Glenn Resch
and Braden Holtby, are the pride, respectively, of Moose Jaw and Lloydminster, Saskatchewan. Aside from their provincial birthplace, they have something else in common: Each went on to great success after being largely overlooked by NHL scouts.
The Capitals waited until the fourth round (No. 93) of the 2008 NHL Draft before selecting Holtby, who had losing records in each of his two full seasons with Saskatoon of the Western Hockey League. He was the 10th goalie taken in the draft.
However, Holtby had a breakout season in 2008-09, going 40-16-4 with a 2.62 goals-against average and .910 save percentage. The Capitals took notice and signed him; he was 7-3-2 with a 2.95 GAA for South Carolina of the ECHL and 25-8-2 with a 2.32 GAA for Hershey of the American Hockey League. By the 2012-13 season, he was the unquestioned No. 1 goalie in Washington.
Resch played 14 seasons in the NHL after going completely under the radar: He was never drafted.
"But I did get a good education," he chuckled. "Four years with the Minnesota Duluth Bulldogs, where I improved my goaltending and got a teaching degree while I was at it."
Resch also paid some pre-NHL dues in the minors. Before becoming part of one of the NHL's best goalie pairings with
Billy Smith
on the New York Islanders, he bounced from Muskegon of the International Hockey League (1971-72) to New Haven of the American Hockey League (1972-73) to Fort Worth of the Central Hockey League (1973-74).
To call Resch a late bloomer might be an understatement.
"When other kids were skating and playing hockey at eight years of age," he recalled, "I was playing goal -- wearing rubber boots."
He traded in the boots for skates and by 1966-67 was playing for Regina of the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League, though he was fourth in the goalie rotation. But before the 1967 playoffs began, all three goalies ahead of him went down with injuries, giving him the opportunity to show what he could do.
His coach, Bob Turner, a five-time Stanley Cup winner with the Montreal Canadiens, was impressed. So were NCAA scouts. Resch wound up at Minnesota Duluth, where he played three seasons before turning pro. His No. 1 was retired by the school in 2015.
Turner had promised he'd help Resch get into the NHL -- and he lived up to his word after becoming a scout with the Oakland Seals, working for general manager Bill Torrey. The expansion Islanders hired Torrey as their GM in 1972, and Turner touted his former goalie, who had signed as a free agent with the Canadiens, when Torrey came to him looking for help in goal. He made the deal, and the Resch-Smith duo was one of the NHL's best in the late 1970s and into the 1980s. Resch earned a Stanley Cup ring in 1980, though Smith carried the load during the playoffs.
By that time, Resch was better known as "Chico." The nickname was bestowed on him by teammate
Doug Rombough
, who saw a resemblance between Resch and a character in the then-popular TV sitcom, "Chico And The Man."
Holtby was voted winner of the
Vezina Trophy
as the NHL's top goalie in 2015-16 and won the
William M. Jennings Trophy
in 2016-17 after the Capitals allowed the fewest goals during the regular season. But when the 2018 Stanley Cup Playoffs rolled around, he was on the bench. Philipp Grubauer started the first two games against the Columbus Blue Jackets, losing each in overtime.
Coach Barry Trotz went back to Holtby, whose play helped the Capitals win their first Stanley Cup championship since entering the NHL in 1974.
Holtby credits then-goalie coach Mitch Korn with improving his technique. "Mitch gave me different drills, videos and teaching muscle memory in a way I'd never done before," he said. "I knew the problem was there, but I didn't have a good game plan for fixing it until Mitch came along."
The Capitals finished first in the Metropolitan Division in 2018-19 and 2019-20, but were eliminated in the Eastern Conference First Round by the Carolina Hurricanes in 2019 and the Islanders in 2020. He became a free agent after the loss to the Islanders and signed a two-year contract with the Vancouver Canucks.
Resch's time on Long Island ended less than a year after the Islanders won their first of four consecutive championships. He was traded to the Colorado Rockies, one of the NHL's weakest teams, on March 10, 1981. On many nights with the Rockies and New Jersey Devils (after the franchise moved in the summer of 1982), Resch's goaltending was all that kept the team competitive.
He was traded to the Philadelphia Flyers on March 10, 1986, and retired after the Flyers got to
Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final in 1987
. Resch finished his NHL career with 231 victories -- pretty good for a guy who didn't make his NHL debut until he was 25.
Like Resch, Holtby will be coming to a new team in his early 30s. He'd like nothing more than to top his fellow Saskatchewan native and win a second Stanley Cup championship.