SoMnFan
Posts: 94902
Status: offline
|
And people wonder why I love this guy?
Its long, but a must-read for most of us in here.
The Adventures of Alex Stalock: Suffering fan, acrobatic Wild goalie and hockey dad
Michael Russo Feb 4, 2020 47
He may be living out his dream in his fourth season wearing the Wild’s Iron Range green sweater only a slap shot from where he grew up, but make no mistake, Alex Stalock is “one of us.”
And by “one of us,” we mean a tormented Minnesota sports fan just like you.
The veteran goaltender gets nightmares thinking about Blair Walsh hooking that 27-yard field goal to end the Vikings’ season so painfully in 2015. He remembers Brett Favre’s interception in New Orleans in the 2009 season like it was yesterday. He has felt the Timberwolves’ agony since the days of Kevin Garnett and Wally Szczerbiak. He’s tired of the Twins running into the friggin’ Yankees “year after year after year.”
“I remember sitting in the basement with my dad,” Stalock said. “He played football in college (at Bemidji State), so we would always watch the Vikings. My brother and my mom, big Vikings fans, and Gary Anderson, all year, he’s perfect on field goals and extra points, and sure enough, he missed that (38-yarder) against Atlanta to put us in the Super Bowl in ‘98.
“I mean, ‘Oh my God.’ That was my first real taste of being a Minnesota sports fan. I’m 11 years old and the first time you’re really like, ‘Holy cow, that stung.’ Every sport, you live and die with each team.”
And that includes the Wild.
“You start with ’03, that playoff push (to the conference finals),” Stalock said. “I was either a freshman or a sophomore in high school, and those games, I was on edge, you know what I mean? I’d sit in my basement and the next day at school, you’d run up to your friends and be like, ‘Holy cow, Richard Park, are you kidding me? Bruno, what a goal!!!’
“But then, the way it finished, it was heartbreaking because we couldn’t buy a goal vs. (Jean-Sebastien) Giguere. Just so close to the Stanley Cup Finals.”
So Stalock feels your pain.
He was 3 months old in October 1987 and 4 years old at the same time in 1991, so he doesn’t remember the Twins’ World Series titles, but “I remember watching the VHS of ’91 over and over again and just to see how cool that was. I would give anything to watch one of our teams do it again. I would give anything to be on the team to do it again.
“Now to be on the other side, like playing professionally for one of these teams that have maybe broken hearts in the past, it would be so cool to be part of that first group that could bring us a championship for the first time in a long, long time and help end our suffering.”
Stalock is as Minnesotan as they come.
The South St. Paul native and Minnesota-Duluth product has a Minnesota accent, whether he thinks so or not. He loves to fish, especially ice fishing. Like his parents and his brother, he even married his high school sweetheart, Felicia, who, you betcha, was a South St. Paul star hockey player (in 2005, she was a Ms. Hockey Minnesota finalist after a 54-goal, 103-point season) and St. Cloud State standout.
But living and mostly dying with our agonizing, aggravating sports teams is what really bonds No. 32 to all Minnesotans.
“Everybody goes through it together,” said Stalock, a self-admitted KFAN rube. “When you talk sports, everybody says, ‘We.’ If you’re in Northern Minnesota at a little 20-seat bar, they say, ‘We.’ A 10-year-old kid says, ‘We.’ No one says, ‘You guys.’ You know what I mean?
“It’s just a unique sports state. No one, no other place is like it, that I’ve been. And it’s just, we all go through it together. You know, the … misery.”
It’s no secret the Wild are in a pretty precarious position right now in the standings.
Stalock, the Wild’s backup in the first year of a new three-year deal, will make his career-high 24th start Tuesday night against the Chicago Blackhawks. He’ll be looking to tie his career-best with a 12th victory.
And, man, the Wild could use one of their goaltenders — Stalock or Devan Dubnyk — to string off some W’s as they enter Tuesday’s play last in the Central Division and seven points out of a playoff spot.
This is Stalock’s latest chance.
“I’d like somebody to get this team on a roll,” coach Bruce Boudreau said.
________________________________________
In net, the undersized (albeit listed at 6-foot), aggressive goalie certainly makes it fun.
He’s a battler. He’s an acrobat. And he’s one crazy puck mover.
Not only is he quick to come out of his net on almost every dump-in, he has no qualms trying to outrace an oncoming forward to the blue line for a loose puck.
Earlier this season in Ottawa, he actually skated above the right circle and wisely shot the puck into his bench when he realized he had nowhere else to go with it.
“I tried to nail (equipment manager) Tony (DaCosta) because he says I’ll never score a goal in this league,” cracked Stalock.
Boudreau has joked that he always holds his breath and “you’re always hoping he makes the right decision.”
That goes double for Stalock’s wife, mother Cindy, father Brian, and brother Nick, a former NAHL and St. Olaf College hockey player who today has three children, owns CrossFit St. Paul and is “double the size of me,” Alex says.
“It’s funny because we’ve been together for so long and he’s been playing the same brand of hockey since we were 13-year-old kids, so you’d think I’d be used to it by now,” said Felicia, who is a month and four days older than the 32-year-old Stalock, “but it still makes your heart go pitter-patter every time he comes out of the net. It’s still nerve-wracking for us and his parents sitting alongside me at the game. There’s a lot of swear words.”
Back in December, Stalock was stretching by the red line in Chicago when Blackhawks goalie Robin Lehner tapped him on the pads.
“I was like, ‘Oh, I wonder what he would want,’ because we don’t know each other,” Stalock said. “He’s like, ‘Hey, I just want to tell you, I love your style, man. I love your old-school style.’ It was so nice. I’ve never had someone say that.
“But I tell Staalzy (Eric Staal) all the time, I loved watching (former Carolina Hurricanes goalie) Cam Ward. I’m sad he’s out of the league now. He had that style where he made the game look fun. And, Marty Brodeur. And, I love watching when (Jonathan) Quick plays. I love watching how he moves and his athletic ability.
“It’s just, I think, honestly, I never had a true goalie coach until juniors.”
Stalock’s kinda-sorta goalie coach in high school was one of his biggest mentors, a former St. Paul cop named Gary McAlpine.
“But he taught me how to work hard,” Stalock said. “He taught me how to work. And, I remember one time we were up in Cloquet playing and I taunted the fans. We won. And, I was being an idiot. And, I remember Gary was waiting for me when I came off the ice and he yelled at me for like five minutes and I was like, ‘Holy shit, that’s the last time I ever do that.’ But until I went to Cedar Rapids (in the USHL), played for Mark Carlson, who I still talk with to this day, and won a Clark Cup, I was still doing skate saves and stuff. I was literally working on skate saves. Like what they did in the 70s and 80s. Like, down-on-one-knee skate saves. Literally, with my skate blade in the corner. And, I didn’t know any better.”
In 2011-12, Stalock basically missed an entire season of hockey after getting stepped on and slicing a nerve in his leg. He worked with Sharks goalie coach Corey Schwab, who’s now in Arizona, for months and says it was a blessing toward continuing his career and refining his game.
“We worked on down recovery, which got big when Patrick Roy was first doing it,” Stalock said. “It’s where you go down, you make the butterfly save, but then you recover in your butterfly and you’re still controlled. Because, for me, it used to be dive headfirst. Everything was shot, then sprawl. But as I rehabbed with Corey, that’s when I really learned how to try to be controlled. Every single day I practiced. And because I wasn’t ready to play, I was able to go at my own pace. I wasn’t taking shots, I was just rehabbing my leg. But, it was learning how to go down, getting your muscles to stay in control.
“It’s amazing how hard it is to retrain your brain. It was a nightmarish injury. But, it was honestly a blessing for the stuff that I got to do as far as rehab. It got me to really work on movement, which really sucks. No one wants to do movement drills with no pucks. But, it was so beneficial to me.
“You watch some of these goalies and they’re so efficient. They’re obviously bigger and stuff. But, that’s how I have to play. And you know, being a smaller guy in the league, I have to be aggressive. I have to be at the top of my paint. And, I have to rely on athleticism and reactions. And, not just being a percentage goalie. And, saying, ‘I’m here. This puck can’t get by me.’ I have to read shots. Like Duby, he’s so smart about position. He thinks the game so well. Like he knows, ‘Oh this shot, this can’t beat me here,’ where I almost have to try to be a play ahead with my feet and be quicker and get to this spot. Establish this ground. Because I don’t have that extra inch — or six — that he has. I have to make myself look bigger than I really am.”
Boudreau jokes that the only thing he wishes about Stalock was that he could grow another foot, but make no mistake, Stalock is one of Boudreau’s favorite people.
“The little guy has competes and battles,” Boudreau said. “I played with Darren Pang, and we all know how small he is, yet he battled so hard that any loose puck, he was on it, he would be out of the net, he would be battling in front, he would be hacking and whacking you, and that’s what Alex does because he knows that’s what he has to do to stay in the NHL.”
Stalock sometimes looks at some of the young, up-and-coming goalies of today and is downright astonished.
“Like, some of these young, young goalies today are so good. I mean, every year at training camp, I’m amazed at our drafted kids that come in and play,” he said. “There’s not a huge gap in between the NHL and these kids that are just drafted. They’re technical, they’re sound. They just have to learn the game. Happens at different speeds. You’ve got to play with traffic now. But these kids, their skill level is unbelievable. That Hunter Jones draft pick of ours, I’m like, ‘God, if I played like you when I was 21, holy cow, I’d be a star.’ I would watch him in the intrasquads and I was like, ‘How old are you, again?’”
But what makes Stalock really unique, and what also gives his family — and his coach — coronaries is his love for handling the puck.
“When we’re in sync with our D, it’s so effective. And, you can eliminate shots,” Stalock said. “Like the Philly game (in December), I only faced 18 shots, but you look back on it and, sometimes, they can’t establish forechecks. They’re only dependent on rush. And, if you can get out of the zone fast, it makes it so much easier for our skilled, offensive guys.”
Stalock’s dream is to score a goal one day in the NHL like Nashville’s Pekka Rinne did last month. Wild teammate Kaapo Kahkonen nearly did so in Florida back in December.
“It was funny, but when it happened, everybody looks at me on the bench,” Stalock said. “I loved how he said he had a lane. I’m going to start going for a goal up only a goal, too, and I’ll just say to Bruce if I fire it up the middle and it hits their guy, ‘I thought I had a lane.’ But it was great and I was rooting him.
“Look, I’m not going in the record books for anything other than if I score a goal. So, I’d love to, yeah.”
________________________________________
Simon Stalock enters the “locker room,” which is actually the spare bedroom in his parents’ basement where he stores his goalie gear in his “locker,” which is actually a small wooden dresser with two pull-out drawers.
Atop the left drawer is his blocker.
Atop the right drawer is his trapper.
Leaning against Simon’s “stall” is his little goalie stick with his tiny white and red Warrior pads up against a wall a few feet over.
Pint-sized Simon has one vivid imagination, and the 4-year-old sure looks like he wants to follow in the footsteps of his dad.
In fact, as he’s about to demonstrate, Simon watches his dad’s every move on the ice.
After Simon suits up, he tells his father to go over to the switch in the hallway, where he is to begin to flick the lights on and off and announce the starting lineup for the upcoming tension-packed … knee hockey game.
Simon demands that his sister, 2-year-old starting “defenseman” Selena, be “Number 24, Matt Dumba.” Papa Stalock then blurts out the remainder of the starting lineup before announcing, “And in goal, Simmmmmonnnnn Staaaalllllock.”
Simon sprints out of his “locker room,” and shocks his parents by diving face-first onto his belly, where he proceeds to do the same stretching routine that his dad does on the ice every time he starts a game for the Wild.
If you’ve never noticed, pay attention Tuesday night when Stalock emerges with the rest of his Wild teammates just before the National Anthem. With the arena in the dark and P.A. announcer Adam Abrams revealing the Wild starters against the Chicago Blackhawks, Stalock will skate to one of the corners in the Wild’s end zone, drop to his stomach and begin to jut his legs back and forth in manic fashion.
It’s easy to miss with the rink dark, music blaring and so many pregame happenings, but Simon must have recently noticed because he emulated his dad out of the blue, which of course warmed the hearts of both Alex and Felicia.
“Every day, he comes up with something new like tonight with the leg thing,” said Felicia. “Or, he’ll hear something on the Wild broadcasts and he’ll say the same thing the commentators say after his little practice the next day. It’s so funny to see him start to connect the dots.”
On the family’s outdoor rink, Simon usually keeps his goalie gear stored in the “locker room” and instead suits up as one of his favorite players, Dumba or Jordan Greenway.
“He sees this stuff, and it’s amazing what he picks up on, like what guys do with their sticks, because then he does the same thing,” Stalock said. “He’ll score and then skate by the side of the rink and give knucks to no one. You know, like when the players do the fly-by at the bench after scoring. It’s so interesting.
“I remember the first couple times he’d come down to the glass, all you could see was his little head and he really didn’t know which goalie was me. It’s kind of like my daughter now. All you can see is her head. But now Simon can tell what gear is mine.”
Simon’s in the Learn to Skate program and recently took his hockey pictures.
“There’s like 300 kids in the cafeteria and every kid’s in player’s gear, and, of course, Simon’s the one kid who had the goalie gear on and all the parents are laughing like, ‘Look at this kid,’” Alex said, laughing. “The picture is honestly him in his goalie gear doing a pad stack in front of his team.
“I’m like, ‘Holy cow, you’ve got to be kidding me.’”
There’s no doubt, Simon has become obsessed with hockey, which can be both fun and humbling for his dad.
He watches NHL Network. He gets on YouTube and watches the highlights.
“I’ll get home and he’ll be watching the replay of the game, and he’ll be like, ‘You guys lost last night, Dad. You gave up four goals,’” Stalock said. “He just tells me the truth. I mean, it’s not easy to go home after a loss, but he makes you realize there’s more to hockey than that. And it is funny and I’m excited that he gets a kick out of it. And now he knows every team.
“I bring a puck home every road trip, and that’s if he’s good or whatever, which he ends up with it somehow, every time. But now he knows all the teams and asks a lot of questions. He just asked me today, ‘Dad, if the Nashville Predators are playing the Colorado Avalanche, who would win?’ And I told him, ‘I think Colorado probably would right now.’ He goes, ‘No, I think Nashville would, they’re so good.’ And I’m like, ‘Where are you hearing this?’”
Felicia was asked if she’d be able to stomach one day being a goalie mom after years of being a goalie wife.
“Yeah, Al’s mom and I joke, there should be like a one goalie per family limit,” Felicia said, laughing. “But, yeah, I mean, whatever he chooses, is fine with me. Whether it’s hockey, basketball, softball, it’s just such a good learning experience and teaches you so many life lessons when you play sports. And if he picks hockey, we’re all for it, because that’s our family’s passion and our love.”
Selena’s only 2, but her parents have her in a harness because she wants to be out on the ice with Simon.
“She gets right in the mix,” Stalock said. “She’s actually tougher than him. A lot tougher. She’ll get hit or knocked down, she doesn’t cry, whereas Simon, if the dog nips at him or if he gets hit or nailed with a slash, he goes down. It’s just so funny to see that she’s actually the tough one of the family. It’ll be interesting, but I’m sure she’ll want to skate when it’s time.”
________________________________________
With a veteran-laden Wild team, there are three dozen kids who could be roaming the locker-room or family area on game days and nights.
Stalock actually brought in a bunch of sticks and balls and threw them into a locker-room stall next to Dubnyk’s stall so the players’ children can break out into a large game of mini-sticks after afternoon games.
“They know right where to go and they get a big game in there,” Stalock said. “By the drive home, almost 95 percent of the time, Simon is sleeping. But he loves that, and that is all he looks forward to and he gets a kick out of the trainers. Now he knows all the trainers’ names, so he walks in like he owns the place, and says hi to Tony and Tricky (assistant equipment manager Rick Bronwell).
“I think that’s what he’ll remember the most. It’s a privilege for those kids and I think they just love it.”
It’s also a privilege for Stalock that he gets to play at home on a nightly basis.
“I think in the place where our family was at the time that he signed in Minnesota, for Al trying to get his career back on track and for us starting a family and coming home and growing our family, I think it’s been the biggest blessing to have that support of our extended family members and just the support of the state,” Felicia Stalock said. “I can’t think of a game that I haven’t run into someone from South St. Paul or an old teacher or someone messages us, saying, ‘Hey, we went to the game. It was awesome to see Al play.’
“You get so many of those connections that you just can’t replicate in any other city.”
Sure, it becomes stressful for Stalock knowing that his parents — they’re city slickers now, walking to work in downtown Minneapolis, where Cindy is a legal secretary at a law firm and Brian works at an architectural firm — are in the rink every home game, although he’s often been stellar at home. In his Wild career, he’s 17-7-6 in St. Paul with a 2.36 goals-against average and .916 save percentage.
“It’s funny, Bruce will come up to me sometimes the next day if he’s got to pull me and apologizes,” Stalock said, laughing. “I’m like, ‘You don’t have to apologize to me.’ It looks so bad and you feel terrible skating out of the net in front of 20,000 people, but I’m just thinking of my parents. I mean, I can only imagine my mom and dad and how tough that is for them.”
Stalock laughs again.
“Just another miserable Minnesota sports moment, something we’ve got to stop,” Stalock said.
_____________________________
Work like a Captain.
Play like a Pirate.
|
Printable Version
RE: Wild 2019/2020 Season - 
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread