How Knights goalie Parsons is proving size doesn’t matter

One bit of boilerplate banality from athletes, sometimes, is claiming they don’t have any particular statistical goal for a season. But Tyler Parsons entered his NHL Draft season being quite open about stating a goal that involved a counting stat.

In early September, the 18-year-old London Knights goalie was upfront about telling the London Free Press that he would “love to play 60 games.” It was not necessarily a hard target; just an ‘I’m ready’ statement after Parsons had some second-half regression as a rookie in 2014-15. The Rochester Hills, Mich., native has emerged as London’s finest homegrown goalie since Michael Houser, who led the 2011-12 Knights to within one goal of winning the MasterCard Memorial Cup.

“I knew I had to play a lot of games this year and I prepared my body for it over the summer to prevent injuries,” says Parsons, whose Knights lead the Erie Otters 3-0 in the OHL Western Conference final going into a closeout Game 4 at London’s Budweiser Gardens on Wednesday. “I didn’t end up reaching 60 games, but I played a fair amount of regular-season games [49]. I felt great. I just wanted to focus on being the team’s backbone and wanting the team to have confidence in me.”

The 6-foot-2, 185-pound Parsons, who has a 2.36 average and .921 save percentage whilst helping the Knights go 11-1 in the post-season, is NHL Central Scouting Service’s No. 3-ranked North American goalie. He’s an athletic hybrid, like his presumptive counterpart for the OHL final, the Niagara IceDogs’ Alex Nedeljkovic.

Playing that style means training for continuous, fluid movement—opening up the hips, as your local yogi would put it. As a rookie, Parsons was prone to getting into various twists his body couldn’t necessarily handle. Last summer, Parsons and his trainer, Dan Allison of Livonia, Mich., focused on making sure he was up for a long grind.

“He’s about a hour away from me and I’d go out there 4-5 days a week,” says Parsons, who played his 62nd game on Tuesday when London defeated Erie 5-1. “We’d work with all sorts of mobility exercises to make sure the core was strong. That’s a big part of goaltending—having the strong core so you don’t pull or tear anything.

“We did a lot of kettlebell work—stuff like bending down and elevating one leg while keeping the other leg stable. A lot of resistance stuff, sled pushing, lot of ground movements, mobility stuff. It’s all about stability and being mobile in your hips.”

That fits in with the NHL’s big goalie trend abating as teams look for athletes with flexibility and vision. Parsons’ goalie coach in London, Dave Rook, is goalie development coach for the NHL’s Nashville Predators. The Preds have 6-foot-7 Pekka Rinne at the top of a organizational depth chart, but is also includes 5-foot-11 Juuse Saros with the AHL Milwaukee Admirals.

“At the end of the day, it’s from the shoulders up that makes the difference,” Rook says. “If I have a 6-foot-2 goalie, possibly with not as much skill as a 6-4 goalie, but who competes and battles and is mentally tough, I would much prefer to have him. I think that is the case with Tyler…. He might not get a lot of work, but he can make a huge save to change the momentum of a game.

“Of course, if you can get that in a 6-4 goalie, you’re laughing, but more often than not, that comes with a smaller goalie. I think, somewhat, the mentality is changing a bit because you need that goalie who can make that save.”

The Mitch Marner-led Knights have outscored Erie by an aggregate 18-6 across the last three games. Being on a dominant team brings a unique pressure since observers looking, or hoping, for a flaw might start with the young man behind the mask. But Parsons brings the Knights a much-needed presence between the pipes.

“Tyler is a leader, just by his actions on the ice, his compete level at practice,” Rook says. “He sometimes screws up drills because he’s competing on every shot. He’s making our shooters better, more confident, by competing so hard. They know he’s going to be there with a chance to make a save and that goes a long way. In Kitchener when we were down [during the conference semifinal] he didn’t have his best game, but they knew he would battle through. He made three big saves in that third period.”

As a Michigander, Parsons came by that while playing roller hockey before switching over to the ice version when he was 11 years old. His first time in net was a spot start in a roller hockey game at the Joe Dumars Fieldhouse, an eponymous emporium of sports owned by the Basketball Hall of Fame guard of Detroit Pistons fame.

“They had rental pads, so they strapped me up and I got a shutout and stuck with it from there,” Parsons says. “Everyone says roller hockey is like a different sport, and it really is. I think that is where I got my compete level from. You can’t slide, so you always have to compete and dive and make those desperation saves. You try to use your footwork and flexibility to make saves.”

Barring an all-time comeback by Erie and/or the Barrie Colts, the OHL final will be Niagara-London with a goalie reunion from USA Hockey’s national junior team tryouts in December. Parsons was cut, while the elder Nedeljkovic helped Team USA earn the bronze medal in Helsinki.

“I really wasn’t upset at all,” Parsons says. “It was great being there and having some of the top players shooting at me. There’s always next year.”

That second Memorial Cup title has been elusive for London since Corey Perry and Co. won in 2005. Since the Shawinigan Spring of 2012, the Knights haven’t been as close to the summit, losing in the ’13 semifinal and going 0-3 as the host team in ’14.

“We know we have the team for [getting to the Memorial Cup],” Parsons says. “We got the offence, so we have to play better every game defensively and execute on special teams. There are teams that will try to you grind you down, and we just have to be better.”

That takes in every phase of the game, and the Tyler Parsons project has been all about making sure he won’t be fazed, or fatigued.