Former Vancouver Canucks goaltender Kirk McLean says that added time in the American League League allowed him to figure out what it took to succeed in the NHL.
McLean spent the 1985-86 season bouncing between the New Jersey Devils and the Maine Mariners after he was drafted in the sixth round of the NHL Draft the year prior.
“It was a great learning process for me,” McLean said Monday on Sportsnet 650’s Canucks Central at Noon. “There wasn’t really any goaltending instruction, that stuff wasn’t really around just yet. I was there to learn the game on the go.”
The Devils had depth in net and head coach Tom McVie rotated between McLean and Craig Billington, who was still a teenager that had gone four rounds ahead of McLean in the 1984 draft. Both McLean and Billington would spend stretches in the NHL before then being sent down.
It may have been a unique situation in New Jersey at the time, but there are similarities with this year’s Canucks. Vancouver has a strong roster of goaltenders to call on and there’s potential for a platoon of Jacob Markstrom and Anders Nilsson. (Not that Vancouver wouldn’t know what it’s like to juggle two No. 1 netminders.)
McLean describes the Canucks’ goaltending depth as a “tough situation” and related to being one among many trying to stand out. Playing in the minors, McLean was eventually scouted by then-player agent Brian Burke and traded to the Canucks.
McLean was backing-up Steve Weeks when he first joined Vancouver, who was an “abnormal” goaltender at the time for being in excellent shape. Weeks also taught younger athletes what it meant to be a professional. Previously, Markstrom had a similar veteran figure in Ryan Miller, who is 10 years his senior.
With the exception of rare, young goaltending talent that can immediately start, McLean said goalies need time to develop into the players they’re capable of being.
“Unless you’re one of those goaltenders that comes in and makes an instant impact, I think it’s important for goaltenders — and defencemen especially — to learn their trades because it is a completely different game coming out of college or junior hockey,” he said.
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