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<\/p>\nNot many hockey dreams are cultivated in Odessa, Texas, the home of \u201cFriday Night Lights\u201d, but this is where United States Olympic hero Connor Hellebuyck was first told he was good enough to make it in the big time.<\/p>\n
Joe Clark, his general manager and position coach with the Odessa Jackalopes, had told some of Hellebuyck\u2019s teammates that they needed to get his autograph while they still had a chance. During one video session, the GM turned to the teenage goaltender and said, \u201cYou\u2019re going to play in the NHL.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cReally?\u201d Hellebuyck replied.<\/p>\n
Really.<\/p>\n
The Jackalopes play their games in the Ector County Coliseum, site of a couple of Elvis Presley concerts in 1976 and some rodeo and oil shows in the years since. While the high school football rivalry that inspired a book and later a TV series \u2014 Odessa vs. Permian \u2014 could bring in 20,000 fans at Ratliff Stadium, the Jackalopes would draw 4,000 to the Coliseum on good nights. The paying customers did appreciate how the physicality on the ice mirrored what they saw on the gridiron.<\/p>\n
In 2011, financial losses compelled team ownership to transition from the professional ranks of the Central Hockey League to the second-tier junior ranks of the North American Hockey League. That year, Odessa scout Craig Sarner, the leading scorer on the silver medal-winning 1972 U.S. Olympic hockey team, was watching high-powered AAA prospects in a Michigan tournament when he wandered over to an adjacent rink and spotted a tall, lanky goalie playing for a struggling high school team from suburban Detroit. Hellebuyck was better than the AAA kids.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to draft you,\u201d Sarner later told him, \u201cbecause I don\u2019t think anybody knows about you. It\u2019s my job to put as many good people in front of you as possible, and I\u2019m taking the chance that you\u2019re not going to be drafted.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though Hellebuyck was heartbroken when he wasn\u2019t picked by any team in the NAHL or the upper-tier United States Hockey League, Sarner\u2019s gamble paid off. Clark said Odessa invited Hellebuyck and seven other goalies to a Minnesota camp. \u201cHe was a nobody then,\u201d the GM said, \u201cbut I saw him make things look easy. He looked like he was in control and knew what he was doing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI later told Sarner, \u2018If you knew Helly was this good, you wouldn\u2019t have gambled by not drafting him. Don\u2019t BS me on that one.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Lee Scheide, sports editor of the Odessa American, remembered Hellebuyck as a quiet workhorse who carried the 2011-12 Jackalopes to the postseason. Though it was hard to fathom a future gold medal-winning goalie and NHL MVP emerging from the West Texas hockey scene, Scheide, who regularly covered the team, said there were obvious hints back then of Hellebuyck\u2019s greatness.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt 6-4, his size was dominating, and it was hard to even find any space around him,\u201d Scheide said. \u201cThe more he played, the better and more confident he became. He was always going to make the routine saves, and he also made the spectacular saves to keep them in games. It was a lot of fun to watch.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hellebuyck wasn\u2019t ranked among the top 36 North American goalies by NHL Central Scouting entering the 2012 draft, but the Winnipeg Jets did take him in the fifth round with the 130th pick. Hellebuyck first played two major college seasons at UMass-Lowell.<\/p>\n
Clark warned him that the school had a talented veteran goalie in place and that he would need to be patient.<\/p>\n
\u201cConnor looked me square in the eye and said, \u2018I\u2019ll have his job by Christmas,\u2019\u201d Clark recalled. \u201cAnd he did.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hellebuyck led UMass-Lowell to the Frozen Four seven years before he won his first of three Vezina Trophies with Winnipeg, and a dozen years before becoming the first American-born goalie to win the Hart Trophy.<\/p>\n
At 32, Hellebuyck was already a Hall of Famer before he left for Italy and these Winter Olympics.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then,\u201d Clark said, \u201che became a national treasure overnight.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n Thirteen years before the Olympics, Connor Hellebuyck led UMass-Lowell to its first Frozen Four as a Division I program. (Justin K. Aller \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
As a coach, scout and executive in the U.S. and abroad for the better part of four decades, Clark, 65, has remained a mentor of Hellebuyck. He visited the goalie\u2019s Winnipeg home last month and sat in the stands for a practice, watching him hoot, holler and chirp at teammates \u2014 having a blast in the middle of an extended Jets winless streak.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think the coaching staff really liked that; they didn\u2019t say that, but that\u2019s the vibe I got,\u201d Clark said. \u201cBut (Hellebuyck) isn\u2019t going to do it any other way. I was sitting around his kitchen table one night talking about it. \u2026 I don\u2019t mean to sound brutal toward the organization, but this year they\u2019re circling the drain, and he wasn\u2019t going to allow himself to circle the drain.<\/p>\n
\u201cConnor said, \u2018The day I can\u2019t have fun, I\u2019ll quit. I won\u2019t play. I have to have fun.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Clark told his former goalie that he needed to pack that attitude with his bags on the flight to the Winter Games in Italy.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s exactly what I plan to do,\u201d Hellebuyck replied.<\/p>\n
Goalie and coach have had these conversations for years. On the website for Clark\u2019s company, InsideEdge Goaltending, Hellebuyck says in a video testimonial that Clark is his go-to person when his physical or mental game is off.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would call him up, and he would fix me up, and I swear to you in one phone call,\u201d Hellebuyck says. \u201cI\u2019d feel great the next day, and I\u2019d feel like the whole world came off my shoulders.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
\n Connor Hellebuyck maintains a close relationship with Joe Clark, right. (Courtesy of Joe Clark)<\/p>\n
Sunday morning, Clark woke up too late to watch the first two periods of the U.S.-Canada Olympic final. He had a good reason: He was dealing with the after-effects of his first chemotherapy treatment for Non-Hodgkin lymphoma.<\/p>\n
A former editor in the Omaha World-Herald sports department, Clark wasn\u2019t about to miss one of the most compelling sports stories of his time. He joined his wife at a neighbor\u2019s house in McCool Junction, Neb., to watch the rest of the game. He saw Hellebuyck make that astounding save against Devon Toews early in the third period. He saw a goalie known for his big-game setbacks in Winnipeg, in Clark\u2019s words, \u201cconquer the skill of having fun. The key is dealing with stress and the big moment, and now Connor has mastered the big moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Americans\u2019 overtime victory moved Sarner to tears as he watched with a friend outside of Minneapolis. \u201cDid I see this coming in Odessa? Hell no,\u201d he said through a laugh.<\/p>\n
Clark sent Hellebuyck a text with heart and muscle emojis and the simple message, \u201cCongrats, Connor. But I\u2019m not surprised.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Not many hockey dreams are cultivated in Odessa, Texas, the home of \u201cFriday Night Lights\u201d, but this is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":469498,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5121],"tags":[5,78,54125,4,77,18,5288],"class_list":{"0":"post-469497","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-winnipeg-jets","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-jets","10":"tag-mens-olympic-ice-hockey","11":"tag-nhl","12":"tag-winnipeg","13":"tag-winnipeg-jets","14":"tag-winnipegjets"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116125572543261116","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}