Eddie Johnston, 80 years young and energetic as ever, once was an NHL goaltender.
Sorry, he was a goal-keeper.
That's his term of choice to this day, and it's more than just a charm. When he speaks it, it's as if he hopes to resuscitate it. Or, at the least, to remind us of that half-century of hockey when men were men, masks were for Halloween and the backups were equipment managers summoned only in emergencies. They didn't just tend the net. They would keep it. It was theirs and no one else's. They bled, they were stitched up, and they stayed put.
They were defined by their valor far more than for cutting angles or controlling rebounds.
To put that into a modern perspective, they were Jeff Zatkoff.
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Less than four minutes into the Penguins' 5-2 rout of the Rangers, this in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup playoffs Wednesday night at Consol Energy Center, among the first of Zatkoff's 35 saves was this point-blank blocker thrust on Kevin Hayes:
See the thrust there?
Hayes pounced on that puck, then got all of the snapper. Ticketed the thing top-shelf, too.
Let's not kid anyone: If that finds its target, everything could have changed. A crowd that's historically tightened up at the first trace of anything amiss in the playoffs could have gone into a self-chokehold. The team itself, having conceded 12 of the game's opening 15 shots, could have fallen far behind. No Patric Hornqvist hat trick, no Sidney Crosby breakaway laser, no Tom Kuhnhackl short-handed game-changer ... none of that might have followed. Because hockey, then and now and forever, is a sport of momentum.
And you just know the told-you-sos on Zatkoff would have rained down in a raging hurry.
I asked him about that one save:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtX-ADSHuJE
I then asked about that thrust with the blocker. It wasn't enough that he'd squared up perfectly to Hayes or that his blocker was in precise position. No, he had to thrust it.
Like he was punching back in a fight.
"I'm not going to lie: That one felt good," he replied. "It's not just that you make the saves. It's that you read the play and see the puck so well that you ... it just feels right."
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Late Tuesday night, less than 24 hours before the Penguins and Rangers were to face off for Game 1 of their Stanley Cup playoff series, Zatkoff's phone rang. It was Mike Bales, his goaltending coach, workout partner and bona fide friend. It was Bales' job to break the news to Zatkoff that he -- and not Marc-Andre Fleury, who'd only just resumed practicing after a concussion -- would get the start. And it was Bales who further informed that he wasn't to whisper a word to anyone. Not even teammates.
In that instance -- not the next night but right then -- Zatkoff's career came full circle.
Born in Michigan, schooled at Miami of Ohio, relegated to the East Coast Hockey League after being drafted by the Kings, then raised through six ... full ... seasons in the AHL, he was always that guy who would battle, who would give everything, but who didn't quite have that NHL pedigree. Maybe it was the excessive motion. The times when he'd fall to the ice and take far too long to get back up. The general lack of smoothness and polish.
The numbers were fine. But even when he played well, he'd hear about his toughness, not his talent. And in this era that stresses the technical above all else, he'd never really fit.
Until now. And even then, only because his employer was left, literally, with no other option beyond baby-faced Tristan Jarry making his NHL debut.
Zatkoff put down the phone and began to process it all.
"This was my moment," he began explaining to me, after this victory, his reaction to Bales' call. "This was it, and I knew it."
So he did what anyone would do when faced with such a situation: He fell asleep.
"Like a baby. All night."
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="600"]
Photos of Jeff Zatkoff in Game 1 Wednesday night. -- DKPS[/caption]
Well, of course. This was going to be another fight. It wasn't a test of his polish or style points or how nervous he'd make anyone along the way. It was his will being tested after the Penguins had all but tossed him aside in favor of top prospect Matt Murray. It was absorbing the ego bruise of awkwardly walking into a locker room as the third goaltender in a manufactured third wide stall. It was his career, as a whole, being questioned by doubts throughout the week after it was clear that both Fleury and Murray might miss this game, with much of that criticism having made its way to him.
He hadn't started a game in two months and a week, and he was suddenly the city's worst fear, the one player who'd undo all the positives these Penguins had built up in that span.
But now, this time, finally, nobody would care how he got the job done.
These were Zatkoff's last words to me following practice Monday: "Throughout my career, I've heard about my style or that I have to work a little harder to make the save. If I get to play in this game, if I really get to play, I'm going to do what I've always done. I'll battle. And maybe I'll show some people something."
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The first step, of course, was to not show anyone anything.
"I'm not allowed to say anything," Zatkoff would say after Wednesday's morning skate. And it would eventually become evident why. Mike Sullivan set up a ruse for all of us. He had Fleury, who's been cleared to practice but not to play, leave the ice first, almost always an indicator as to which goaltender will start. And the coach then did absolutely nothing to dissuade the notion that Fleury might be available.
It could be that it worked. Alain Vigneault, Sullivan's counterpart, spoke openly of how the Rangers were "preparing as if Fleury will be the starter."
Don't feel bad, Alain. A lot of us, myself included, fell for it. I was stunned to see Zatkoff step on to the ice for warmups, an even stronger indicator as to who will start, and even the rest of the Penguins weren't told by Sullivan until 6 p.m., two hours before the puck dropped.
Still, I should have known better.
As far back as Monday, there was an extra edge to Zatkoff. Oh, he was still affable. His personality hardly has another gear in that regard. But those remarks about wanting to prove people wrong, that was something more.
Then on Wednesday morning, though he joked about how "hey, I'll talk with you about anything other than hockey, like your life or whatever," there was an uncommon intensity to his look. One longtime employee observed that he didn't even want to get close to Zatkoff.
We all should have known better.
And Zatkoff should have known better, too, about how this might affect him. After the skate, he returned home to take the ritual nap. Only it wound up becoming a series of naps.
"I'd fall asleep, but I'd get right back up," he'd confess. "Every few minutes, it felt like."
The fight, it seemed, started early.
"I was already playing the game."
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By the time he was ready to play the real game, he took to his crease -- his crease on this night -- and lowered his head downward to the blue paint, alone with his thoughts even in the cauldron of the 18,588 crammed into the place, standing and roaring and even giving him an encouraging shout when he was introduced:
[caption id="attachment_73612" align="alignnone" width="600"]
Jeff Zatkoff lowers his stance in the crease during pregame introductions Wednesday. -- DKPS[/caption]
"You don't get too deep at times like that," he said, dismissing it with a bit of a laugh. "I'm really just trying to focus on staying within myself."
Funny, but his teammates were the ones who looked lost once the puck dropped.
"Yeah, no kidding, right?" Ben Lovejoy would say afterward. "I mean, we're very, very fortunate that Jeff was able to play the way he did."
The praise came from every corner of the room. Not just about the performance, but about all that led to it. They saw Zatkoff get stripped of his status, heard how Jim Rutherford had a chance to trade him at the deadline but didn't to protect his depth, then appreciated how he stayed in the highest of spirits and supported them even as the team got better and better without him.
Lovejoy called Zatkoff "the best teammate you could have on any team, anywhere," and he might have understated that view when compared to others.
“Zatkoff was unbelievable," Eric Fehr said. "And we didn’t expect anything else, to be honest. I think he’s a really good goalie. When he goes out there, he gives us everything he’s got every time. We respect him.”
And pull up a chair for this from Matt Cullen: "He kept us in this. We weren’t good early, and he was awesome throughout. I’ll tell you, everyone in this room loves him. He got such a tough shake all season. He really did. But he’s as good of a guy as you’ll come across. To be honest with you, I don’t think I’ve ever had a better teammate. There’s something really special about the guy. We were playing hard for him. What a guy. What a teammate."
Next came a slight pause.
"He just kept on fighting."
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"I'm an NHL goaltender," Zatkoff would tell me. "And I'm proud of it."
That was it for us, as we then experienced a most welcome interruption.
Johnston still comes to most games and, when he does, he's embraced by everyone inside Consol from Mario Lemieux, the kid he drafted, to Pat the usher and Reg the cook. But I can't recall the last time I saw anyone so delighted to see him as Zatkoff was here.
All the microphones and cameras were gone by this point, and the franchise's patriarch, having waited patiently for his chance, approached to extend his right hand.
"Congratulations," EJ told Zatkoff as they shook. "Great, great game."
Zatkoff's eyes widened almost as much as his smile.
But before he had a chance to respond, EJ offered this keepsake, from one keeper to another:
"You won that game ... with your talent."
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