DENVER – There are only a select set of circumstances that would ever see an NHL goaltender have to introduce himself to his head coach just hours before making a start.
Given how turbulent the last six months have been for Calvin Pickard it only stands to reason that it played out that way with Mike Babcock prior to his Toronto Maple Leafs debut on Friday night.
“I’d met him once, but he didn’t remember me,” Pickard said of the pre-game exchange with Babcock. “I remember his face from obviously TV.”
The 25-year-old is seeking to put himself back on the map as an NHL regular and could never have guessed that the next step in his journey would come here at Pepsi Center.
He was caught off-guard when the call arrived Thursday telling him that he’d been recalled from the American Hockey League to replace Curtis McElhinney, the Leafs regular backup who suffered a lower-body injury during the morning skate in Arizona.
There was plenty of time to think during the two flights that brought Pickard down to Denver for a game against the Avalanche, who drafted him 49th overall in 2010 and gave him his first 86 career NHL appearances. He had to work to find his focus through a swirl of emotions and a back-and-forth game.
“It was a pretty crazy 24 hours,” Pickard said after Toronto’s 4-3 overtime loss. “Getting the call, obviously, and then knowing you’re flying to Denver and starting. It’s been pretty surreal.”
[snippet id=3638225]
That’s a pretty good way to describe his existence since being plucked away from Colorado by the Vegas Golden Knights in June’s expansion draft and then placed on waivers at the end of training camp. After going unclaimed, he was then flipped to the Leafs in an Oct. 6 trade for a 2018 sixth-round pick and prospect Tobias Lindberg.
Pickard has been a member of the AHL Marlies ever since, where he got off to a rocky start with 10 goals against in his first three starts but has since found a rhythm while posting a solid .919 save percentage.
“It’s just getting more comfortable,” he said. “I haven’t played in the American League in a couple years down there, and [I needed to] get used to the guys, obviously. It’s a transition period there. It took two or three games and then after we really found some chemistry and we really bonded well together.”
Given that he played 20 games as Semyon Varlamov’s backup in Colorado two years ago, and made 50 appearances for the Avalanche last season, it’s understandable why Pickard probably never expected himself to then become the No. 2 man on an AHL team.
But that’s where he was in October – playing behind Garret Sparks, who lit the league aflame in the opening months and could easily have been in line for the promotion when McElhinney went down. To hear Babcock explain the decision, it was a matter of timing as much as anything.
“Because the other guy [Sparks], I guess, had been injured and had been sick,” Babcock said of why Pickard got the recall. “And so it’s just the way it goes. It’s kind of like [defenceman] Marty Marincin – you could say [Travis] Dermott could have been the guy. Well he was injured. There’s nothing we can do about that, we just call the guys that are ready.”
It’s hard to believe it doesn’t go a little deeper than that.
With Frederik Andersen occupying the No. 1 spot, and McElhinney and Sparks both on one-way contracts next season, it’s hard to imagine the Leafs deciding to expend even low-grade futures on Pickard unless they really believed he had something promising to offer.
[snippet id=3637277]
He was, after all, the goalie of record for Team Canada at the IIHF World Hockey Championship in May – stopping 40 shots in the gold-medal game before settling for silver with a 2-1 shootout loss to a William Nylander-led Sweden.
Jon Cooper, who coached Canada at the event, told Sportsnet that he came away from it as a “big fan” of Pickard.
The Golden Knights were reasonably high on him, too, leaving proven quantities like Philipp Grubauer, Peter Mrazek, Antti Raanta and Michal Neuvirth unclaimed while selecting Pickard in the expansion draft.
“I honestly didn’t think I was going to get picked up – just because there was a ton of goalies,” said Pickard. “I got that call from George McPhee and I got really excited about that opportunity and it really never [materialized].”
As fate would have it, the Leafs are set to wrap up a post-Christmas road trip with a visit to T-Mobile Arena on Sunday afternoon. Call it the Calvin Pickard reunion tour.
In Friday’s game, he was oddly much more familiar with the players in the home dressing room than his own. He even joked throughout the game with Nathan MacKinnon, his good buddy who had a monster game for the Avalanche by scoring a goal and two assists and drawing the Connor Brown interference penalty in overtime to set up J.T. Compher’s winner.
Pickard could take solace in earning a point and getting the first Leafs game under his belt. Babcock seemed reasonably pleased: “He gave us a chance so that’s about all you can ask for.”
With McElhinney sidelined an undetermined amount of time, he’s got an opportunity. His Marlies experience underscores the importance of getting comfortable as quickly as possible. That will mean simply figuring out who everybody is in the days ahead.
“I had to introduce myself to almost everybody except a couple guys,” said Pickard. “I look forward to getting to know my teammates a little bit more and go from there.”
[relatedlinks]
