(Photo: Travis Whittaker/WCSN)
After two fruitless periods of play on a Friday night in late November, the Vermont Catamounts found offensive life with a goal 2:55 into the game’s final period versus Arizona State in Tempe. Vermont, a team that ranked among the worst of Division I’s hockey programs in practically every statistical category, trailed the Sun Devils 2-1.
The Catamounts were granted a power play just minutes after cutting the deficit in half, and even gained a 5-on-3 advantage with 8:41 left in the game. They applied constant pressure on the ASU net until the buzzer sounded.
The Sun Devils’ sophomore goaltender, Evan DeBrouwer, played hero for his team on Nov. 29. His coach sang his praises.
“The guy to my left here did a hell of a job,” ASU head coach Greg Powers said of DeBrouwer, who made 10 third period saves following the Catamount’s only score.
The lockdown performance was reminiscent of the play of Joey Daccord, the Sun Devils’ starting goaltender in the 2018-2019 season and a current member of the Ottawa Senators’ organization. The then-junior posted a 2.35 GAA in 35 games during ASU’s miracle run to the NCAA Tournament and became the first Sun Devil hockey player to sign with an NHL team in the program’s history.
However, this time, the game’s savior was not Daccord. It was the sophomore, Latvian-born netminder who played just eight total minutes in goal the year before.
Joey Daccord’s improvement was apparent in his numbers. As a freshman, Daccord posted a 4.03 GAA. As a sophomore, that number dropped 52 points to 3.51 and he led his team to an 18-19 overall record. As a junior, Daccord exploded onto the ASU hockey scene and he was not to be denied the team’s starting role.
Daccord was trending towards becoming ASU’s first-ever NHL player and benching him was never a question.
Just a freshman at the time, DeBrouwer knew he had no chance to play and he did not plan on arguing with that logic.
“Obviously it was disappointing at times,” DeBrouwer said of not playing. “I understood the situation. I didn’t have any complaints.
“I’m a competitive guy, so obviously I would rather have been playing. I think I just took it as an opportunity to show that I can take over after Joey’s gone. I just focused on practice and competing as hard as I could every day.”
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When former NHL netminder Eddie Lack joined the Sun Devils over the summer as the team’s volunteer goalie coach, there was one thing that immediately stuck out about DeBrouwer.
“His puck-tracking,” Lack said. “His way to read plays and get there has always been a thing that impressed me.”
The NHL goaltender of five years saw this and realized an adjustment could be made. DeBrouwer crept his way out of the net and found himself staring down players blazing the ice.
“He’s a bigger guy and doesn’t need to come out and challenge that much,” Lack said. “A lot of guys get caught moving while the play or shot is coming. That’s when you get into trouble.”
Lack thought DeBrouwer was too tight and did not have the necessary confidence in himself to succeed. Lack wanted him to back farther into his net.
But despite Lack’s observation in those first practices, DeBrouwer was already working on that aspect of the game. Though he sat behind him all of last year, the goalie had a good relationship with Daccord, and was able to learn from the pro.
Turns out, Daccord had said the same things Lack was telling him.
“He [Daccord] just told me to let the game come to you,” DeBrouwer said. ‘Don’t try and be too active. Just let it come to you. The game is really fast, especially when you’re coming up to the next level from juniors. So it’s easy to get caught in the speed of the game, but if you just relax and let it come to you, then it makes things easier.’”
When Lack arrived on campus, he made the adjustment mentally and physically on DeBrouwer. Staying back kept DeBrouwer under control and let the game truly come to him. Now, with a 2.47 GAA and 92 percent save percentage, Lack sees a huge progression.
“I don’t see that at all with him,” he said of DeBrouwer creeping out. “He stays deep. He trusts himself. And whenever the shot comes, he’s always set for it.”
The duo’s work didn’t stop there. While Lack labeled puck-tracking as the No. 1 thing that stuck out to him about DeBrouwer, the goalie says they’re not even breaching the horizons of what it could be.
“We’ve focused on tracking the puck more instead of being more of a blocking goalie and using my size,” DeBrouwer said.
That size is an asset Lack is helping him manage and use. Lack is a tall goalie himself, standing at 6’4. DeBrouwer stands just an inch below him at 6’3.
Lack’s goal was to get DeBrouwer trusting himself more in every area of his game. Trusting his size was the next facet, which included keeping DeBrouwer up straight and keeping his body calm.
“We keep working on his skating and trusting himself to stay on his feet,” Lack said. “Trust that you’re going to get there on your feet instead of dropping early or staying right. That stuff is going to come with more repetition and time.
“He’s developing better and better every day.”
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Not everything has been so smooth for DeBrouwer since being named the Sun Devils starter.
The one hitch Lack noticed in DeBrouwer immediately was his lack of puck-playing ability. It’s not a necessity for goalies to have, but it certainly helps out defensemen tasked with bringing the puck up ice.
ASU’s d-core has been used to having a goalie with that skill. One of Daccord’s best traits in the net was his ability to play the puck and help the blue-liners out. With him gone, that cushion is as well.
Lack made certain though that DeBrouwer’s lack of puck-playing wasn’t a big deal.
“There’s always small things that come up during a season that you have to remind yourself of,” Lack said. “The biggest thing that we worked on was the puck handling part of it and feeling comfortable with that, because he obviously hadn’t played a game in a full year coming into this one.”
The next step was, despite Lack’s offseason work with DeBrouwer, determining who would actually get the start in the Sun Devils first game of the season.
Prawdzik could have been seen as the favorite. He was the experienced one in terms of age and ice time, and came from a historic program in Boston University, where a first round pick in Jake Oettinger (Now of the Dallas Stars organization) was the only thing blocking his way.
But DeBrouwer was the experienced one within the ASU program, and made strides no one outside the team knew about until the season got started.
Lack just didn’t know how the offseason work would translate.
“It’s just so hard to tell from practice to games and that’s where we didn’t know what was going on when we started the season,” Lack said.
The opening series was a split, with DeBrouwer getting the first game and Prawdzik getting the second.
“The first week we decided that we were going to split between the two of them,” Lack said, citing though that the decision was one strictly Powers made.
“I wouldn’t have read too much into it who got the first start,” he added.
DeBrouwer’s performance in the season-opener, despite a game that was flipped on its head in the last few minutes, earned him the job the next week.
He held onto it until after Christmas.
“I think he’s been great,” Lack said in early December. “He’s taken the job and made the best with it.”
Things changed while school was out of session though.
The Sun Devils trip to Los Angeles was rough. They lost and tied with No. 17 ranked Harvard in Irvine, and DeBrouwer was pulled in the series’ first game after two periods for Prawdzik. The grad transfer was good in his stint – good enough to earn him the start the next night.
DeBrouwer regained his spot quickly. Prawdzik’s first start since the second game of the season went poorly, as he gave up three goals in just 22:48 of hockey with no offensive support. Once the sophomore came back in, the Crimson Tide only scored once more, and ASU settled for a tie at four a piece.
The back and forth in the net that weekend was a foreshadow of the next three weeks for ASU’s goalies. DeBrouwer got his spot back for the Brown series, but fortunes turned once again in the second game. After making it through the first period clean, ASU gave up a three goal onslaught to the Bears. Powers inserted Prawdzik immediately after the third goal.
Like it did against Harvard, the goalie change sparked a rally in ASU. 3-0 was 3-3 with 14:28 left in the period, and sophomore defenseman Josh Maniscalco buried a goal in overtime to give ASU the win.
The Sun Devils decided they’d continue to ride with whoever was hot, meaning that if one goalie performed well the game before, he’d earn the right to start the next one.
Prawdzik was excellent in game one against RIT on January 17, giving up just one goal in a full 60 minutes against 24 shots. But much like the Harvard series, the magic only lasted for a night. On Saturday, Prawdzik had a similar showing to the one three weeks prior: against the Tigers, Prawdzik was torched by their breakaways and puck skills, leading to a 3-1 RIT lead early in the second. DeBrouwer came in, and another comeback occurred.
Since then, DeBrouwer hasn’t lost his spot. He faced a huge test last weekend against the No.8 team in the country: Clarkson, who scored just four goals in its two overtime matches with the Sun Devils.
It appears as if ASU will go goalie-by-committee, starting the player who earns it based on performance in the game prior. It’s certainly not a bad situation to find oneself in; statistically, the Sun Devils have two elite goaltenders on their roster heading into the last and most important stretch of the season.
But it’s more about the fact that ASU is even in that position after losing perhaps the best player in program history last season. DeBrouwer’s rise from eight minutes of college hockey to a possible NCAA-tournament starter is miraculous.
According to his coach, those eight minutes might have been just the right amount.
“The work he put in last year as well…,” Lack said while describing his routine with DeBrouwer. “We’re reaping the benefits of that now.”
