Grubauer Grew Up Early, Revived His Career Late

His unlikely career as the most successful German-born goalie in NHL history still is all about the journey for Philipp Grubauer, even when not contemplating his arduous path to get there.

Whether winning a Stanley Cup, vying for a Vezina Trophy, stealing the Kraken franchise’s debut playoff series, owning a local brewery or grooming his pet horse, the 34-year-old doesn’t waste a day. Grubauer has done that and more whether connecting with fans or building community ties and a full-time Pacific Northwest home, all while still making it back to Germany four weeks every summer.

But ask Grubauer about defying improbable odds as a goalie from small town Upper Bavaria, whose exposure to NHL highlights growing up was watching former Canadian TV pundit Don Cherry’s Rock‘em Sock’em Hockey video cassettes, he’ll shake his head and say his pro athlete schedule doesn’t afford time to “sit down and soak it all in.” That is, until his heritage became a discussion point after being named Germany’s goalie for next month’s 2026 Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina.

“I’ve thought about it a little bit,” Grubauer admitted. “But I probably won’t digest it all or run it through my mind until I retire.”

But he conceded things might change once landing in Milan. Wearing his nation’s colors will be an experience unlike any other and Grubauer admits it could prompt reflection on “the sacrifice that it took to get there.”

Those tribulations, whether he’s thinking about them or not, are in greater focus as Grubauer posts numbers unseen since his 2021 Vezina finalist Colorado Avalanche days. Grubauer, playing in a tandem with Joey Daccord, is 11-5-3 with a 2.34 goals against average and .919 save percentage after a difficult prior season that included relegation to AHL Coachella Valley.

He’s lost only two of his last 11 starts while allowing 22 goals, pulling the Kraken into playoff contention and conjuring memories of his 2023 playoff win over his former Colorado squad. He’ll look to build off that at the Winter Olympics, using the tournament as a potential springboard to another Kraken playoff run.

In some ways, Grubauer never stopped representing Germany from the time he left at 16 for the Canadian major junior ranks. An anomaly from a European country known mostly for soccer, there wasn’t much Grubauer did that wasn’t a first.

Milan should feel like a homecoming beyond wearing his national team jersey. The Olympic venue is only a 320-mile drive south, crossing two borders on highways skirting the Austrian Alps, from Grubauer’s rural hometown of Rosenheim. Though its dairy farms and horse ranches allowed young Grubauer to earn money cleaning barns and milking cows, the town of 65,000 is about hockey passion.

“We breathe hockey in my hometown,” Grubauer said. “You go into the bigger cities, it’s all about soccer. But in my hometown, hockey was it.”

The Rosenheim Starbulls have existed in various incarnations for 98 years at differing levels of the domestic pro Deutsche Eishockey Liga circuit. Grubauer at age 3 began Starbulls youth hockey as a defenseman, becoming a goalie three years later and playing both positions until he was 14.

“It was always fun playing outside (the net) because it gives you a different perspective of what the goalie feels like and how you think as a player,” Grubauer said. “So, it was very helpful.”

So helpful, in fact, that Grubauer began practicing daily with teams of players two and even three years older.

“I ended up practicing four times a day,” he said. “I was at the rink every day after school practicing with every age group and I just loved it.”

By fall of 2006, just shy of his 15th birthday, he’d graduated to Starbulls junior hockey. A year-plus later, in February 2008, he suited up at 16 for their men’s pro team. Locals didn’t dare ponder the NHL. While Leon Draisaitl, Tim Stutzle and Nico Sturm have made Germans more mainstream, they remained a rarity – especially in goal – as recently as a decade ago.

Grubauer is only the second German-born goalie in history along with Thomas Greiss to appear in more than three NHL games. As a boy, those Rock’em Sock’em videos allowed him to emulate favorite goalies Felix Potvin, Mike Richter and a South African-born, Canadian-raised netminder of German descent named Olaf Kolzig.

“Olie The Goalie” played junior hockey for the Tri-City Americans and had 719 NHL appearances mostly with Washington in addition to frequent German national team play. He’d soon help Grubauer achieve an unthinkable NHL career.

But before that, Rosenheim and the Starbulls were it.

“The way it works back home is, you start skating and then you stay within that organization,” Grubauer said. “So, imagine you start playing with the Jr Kraken and then getting a chance to play in that organization for the professional men’s team.”

That was as good as it usually got for Rosenheim’s hockey finest. But a mid-teens Grubauer represented Germany internationally at age group tournaments. At the 2008 World U17 Hockey Challenge in London, Ontario, Germany and 16-year-old Grubauer recorded a stunning 4-2 upset of the U.S. National Team Development Team Program boasting future NHL players Kyle Palmieri, Chris Brown and Cam Fowler.

Grubauer made 42 saves as the game’s outstanding player.

Former German-born NHL defenseman Uwe Krupp – author of the 1996 Stanley Cup winning overtime goal for Colorado and whose son, Bjorn, played on the losing U.S. team – visited the German dressing room to congratulate players. Krupp, then coaching Germany’s men’s national team, said Grubauer’s play “put him on the radar” of scouts.

“He was kind of a skinny kid, pretty small then,” Krupp said. “But he just battled. He was always really, really determined. And a quiet kid. I don’t think he was much of a talker and he still isn’t. He keeps to himself. Not a loudmouth at all.”

Krupp was approached during the tournament by Ontario Hockey League commissioner David Branch and senior player development director Joe Birch inquiring whether Grubauer would join the Canadian junior ranks. George Burnett, GM of the Belleville Bulls, asked whether Grubauer would be worth using an OHL draft pick on.

The question was relayed to an ecstatic Grubauer. He knew of two German goalies who’d gone to play Canadian junior hockey in front of crowds bigger than his country’s pro teams drew. “Once I saw that, I was like, ‘I want to make it to the NHL and that’s how to do it.’”

Told the OHL wanted him, Grubauer figured he’d always have Germany as a fallback. Belleville drafted Grubauer, while Krupp’s son also joined the squad. Krupp became an assistant coach to “keep an eye on my son and on Grubi.”

Krupp recalled Grubauer deplaning from Germany and the Belleville assistant general manager – who’d seen him play previously and had gone to pick him up – not recognizing him. “He told me, ‘He’s huge! He must have grown, right?’ And from there, Grubi just took it and ran.”

Looking back now, though he’d been away from home on German U17 and U16 squads, Grubauer remembered an adjustment.

“I think it was actually harder on my parents than it was for me,” he quipped.

His father, Peter, owned a car dealership in Rosenheim. His mother, Susi, was a local school secretary who’d quit her job to be around for her young son’s fast-rising hockey career. They were humble, family-oriented people worried about their only child moving an ocean away. But they told him he could go if he kept his school grades high.

Grubauer put up modest numbers his initial OHL season, acclimating to life in a foreign land.

“There’s so much information – so many new things,” Grubauer said. “You’re living in a new country. You don’t really speak the language. All of a sudden, you’re playing in front of maybe 5,000 or 6,000 fans. It’s a lot to soak in for a 16-year-old kid away from your family.”

Grubauer said Krupp, the first German-trained player to win a Cup, was “a great mentor” while his son, Bjorn, helped do dressing room translating as they became friends.

“Those guys helped me to trust North America,” Grubauer said. “To learn and understand guys in the locker room.”

Grubauer did sense extra scrutiny as a German goalie curiosity. His locker room teammates weren’t beyond a few “Nazi” comments. Grubauer said it was mostly in a “joking manner” and he took it in-stride during a hockey era quite different from today.

“It wasn’t easy, for sure, at times,” Grubauer said. “But just a couple of people mentioning it or saying stuff when they were mad didn’t hurt my feelings. But obviously it wasn’t a great thing to say.”

Krupp had endured all that and more breaking into the NHL. He said the Belleville organization did a good job watching out for Grubauer and that any barbs – joking or otherwise – quickly dissipated.

“You have to remember,” Krupp said. “He was very good. You don’t mess with your goalie.”

Grubauer indeed had decided the best way to silence skeptics was letting on-ice performance “speak for itself” and was flashing greatness by his rookie season’s end. His second year, as the No. 1 goalie, Grubauer posted a .913 save percentage in 31 games before an in-season trade to the defending Memorial Cup champion Windsor Spitfires – one of the best teams in OHL history. Grubauer went 13-1-2 with a .903 save percentage down the stretch, helping Windsor capture a second consecutive Memorial Cup with a tournament leading .930 save percentage and 2.14 goals against average.

The Capitals soon selected Grubauer in the fourth round of the 2010 NHL draft. One more junior season later, Grubauer was in South Carolina with the Capitals’ lower tier pro ECHL affiliate. Washington’s head goalie coach was none other than former netminder Kolzig of “Olie The Goalie” fame, who Grubauer watched as a boy on Rock’em Sock’em videos.

“He wasn’t like a giddy fan or very shy when he first came up to me,” Kolzig said. “He was cool as a cucumber and just matter of fact in saying, ‘Hey, fellow German and I enjoyed watching you play.’ It wasn’t like he was starstruck or anything.”

The pair grew closer over time, often sharing mutual anecdotes about Bavaria, where most of Kolzig’s German relatives are from.

“I mean, growing up watching him in the NHL and the saves he made, then having him as a mentor and a coach, it was incredible,” Grubauer said. “A guy who played so many games has a different perspective than a guy who might have never played in the NHL. I’m incredibly grateful for the time I spent with him.”

Grubauer was stuck behind two AHL goalies, but Kolzig felt the ECHL’s “haphazard hockey” prepared the youngster for anything. Kolzig knew right away Grubauer, who made the ECHL all-rookie team, would go places.

“He obviously had the athleticism, but he also had that ‘it’ thing,” Kolzig said. “He just made the big save and the key save at the right time. And his teammates loved playing for him.”

Kolzig also feels Grubauer’s OHL stardom removed stigma as a German netminder.

“He was just another player – another good player,” Kolzig said. “It’s not like he came over straight from Europe. I mean, he spent time in the Ontario league, so I don’t think anybody looked at him as a strict European.”

Kolzig said Grubauer’s precocious pro maturity helped him wait out 1 ½ ECHL seasons before AHL promotion partway through 2012-13. By late February 2013, three months after turning 21, he stopped all 14 shots in mid-game NHL debut relief of Capitals starter Braden Holtby during a 4-1 loss in Philadelphia.

“A lot of emotions there,” Grubauer said. “It was crazy because that’s what you play for your whole life.”

His first NHL start 10 days later saw Grubauer stop 40 of 45 shots in a 5-2 road loss to the New York Islanders.

Trapped behind Caps goalies Holtby and Michal Neuvirth, Grubauer made only 18 additional NHL appearances the next two seasons. But Neuvirth was traded and Grubauer became Holtby’s backup.

They flip-flopped No. 1 roles the next two years. Grubauer started much of Washington’s championship 2017-18 campaign ahead of Holtby taking over and carrying that spring’s Cup-winning run. Grubauer was traded to Colorado soon after.

Colorado is where Grubauer finally cemented No. 1 status for three seasons ahead of the Kraken signing him for six-years, $35.4 million in July 2021 after the Avalanche somewhat surprisingly let him leave. Grubauer had just been a Vezina Trophy finalist -- both him and Andrei Vasilievskyi beaten by Marc Andre Fleury.

While Grubauer admits feeling initial pressure because of the contract, he didn’t try to become the new Kraken franchise’s face.

“It almost backfires if you do that because you’re trying so hard to do something for the team and the city,” Grubauer said. “It’s like it works out better if you’re more relaxed and take a step back sometimes than if you’re really trying to force it.”

The Kraken and Grubauer didn’t win much that first season. Grubauer was hurt early the franchise’s second campaign but came on strong the latter half and helped defeat his former Avalanche in the opening playoff round. Grubauer stopped 34 of 35 shots in the series opener and 33 of 34 in the Game 7 clincher with a .926 save percentage over the seven contests.

But the two seasons after that were mixed. By mid-season a year ago, he’d lost his No. 1 job and was sent to Coachella Valley for a month just to get playing time.

He’s been a different NHL goalie since. Grubauer downplays suggestions of hitting an inflection point, saying he just needed reps. Longtime coach Kolzig suggested the demotion and summerlong speculation about his future “probably stung him a little bit” and created a “chip on this shoulder” to prove people wrong.

Kolzig also suspects being reunited with new Kraken head coach Lane Lambert, an assistant with Washington when Grubauer won a Cup, also helped. Same with new goalie coach Colin Zulianello, who Grubauer worked with at Coachella Valley last season.

“You’ve got to gain Phil’s trust before he really opens up,” Kolzig said. “For me, it was a little easier being a fellow German and playing for the national team. But even when you were working on the ice, you had to sell him on what you were trying to get across before he bought in. It’s just a stubborn German way. And he’s old school German. Once you break through, he’s a terrific guy to work with.”

Grubauer agreed Lambert’s arrival helped, though attributing it to team-wide systems play.

“Obviously, the coach makes a huge difference in the system he implements,” Grubauer said. “The way we practice our habits and mistakes and the way we dissect games, it’s huge…It’s slowed the game down for me a little bit this year because I know we’ll always have guys coming back to defend.”

Grubauer chuckled about first impressions others may have of him, saying: “As a German, I might come off as a little bit grumpy at times. That’s the stereotype.”

When asked what part of him is “misunderstood” he paused, then cautiously offered: “I mean, I love my horse and I love being out in nature. I love my dog and anything outdoorsy. In some situations, I’m a social butterfly with the fans trying to put a smile on their face and help them in any way with whatever is going on in their life. I’m there for my friends and family.”

Grubauer and his fiancée – who will marry this summer -- live full-time on the Eastside, where he owns a 21-year-old American Bay Quarter horse named “Tucker” on a nearby ranch and volunteers caring for rescue horses. Growing up working the stables in Rosenheim, a German epicenter for dressage, he’d always wanted a horse of his own.

The “incredible animals” relax him, soothing his mind about what matters on days when Climate Pledge Arena “Gruuuuuu!” chants are scarce. Remind him there’s more going on in life than just a game he plays.

And once the NHL season ends, he doesn’t want to leave.

“The summers here are incredible – no clouds in the sky,” Grubauer said. “You‘ve got water, the mountains. I’ve got my horse. The (Kraken Community Iceplex) facility allows me to come in every day and work out. There’s an amazing gym and I’ve got ice every day.”

And as of two summers ago, he’s got the Gasworks Brewing pub he’s a silent – albeit very prominent – partner in. That came about through his friendship with Chris Steffanci, a major Washington state beer and wine distributor.

They met through Steffanci’s annual charity golf tournament, when he was looking for a Kraken celebrity volunteer. Kraken senior executive Jeff Webster approached Grubauer, who agreed to do the tournament.

“He was just great, taking pictures and shaking hands with all of the people there,” said Steffanci, who’d grown up a lacrosse player and huge Hartford Whalers fan in Connecticut. “He and I basically spent a day together chatting hockey. I sent him a nice gift after, and we just stayed in touch.”

Steffanci and his wife began “hanging out” with Grubauer and his fiancée. On one of their rides on Steffanci’s boat, he showed Grubauer the in-construction brew pub. The goalie was immediately smitten and – given he hails from the Bavarian home of Oktoberfest -- wanted to buy in.

“It’s not like I have a say in the daily outcome of decision making,” Grubauer said. “But we talk about it as a group and you make decisions. It’s been super fun.”

Steffanci said he’s mingled with plenty of pro athletes through his job and isn’t always enamored. But Grubauer, he said, was different. His son, Bodhi, 4, worships Grubauer after the goalie showed up to his birthday party.

“He’s super authentic and has zero ego,” Steffanci said. “If you didn’t know he was a hockey player you’d never know it by conversation. He kind of is who he is. He’s a good friend who happens to be a hockey player.”

And one who, though not the franchise’s face, continues to represent it well. Grubauer is often the first player to respond to young fans clamoring for autographs. After the Kraken’s loss to Pittsburgh on Martin Luther King Day, he addressed a gathering of German-speaking fans at Climate Pledge Arena and lingered afterward for longer than expected.

Grubauer attributes his life’s outlook to his circumstances. His grown-up approach to living a life beyond hockey is largely due to leaving Germany in his youth just to play it

“It helped me grow up earlier than maybe some other people,” he said. “If I’d stayed home, maybe I wouldn’t have grown up so quickly. I became super independent from an early age on.”

And now, unlikely NHL career revived once more, he’ll head “home” to within hours of where he once milked cows wearing the colors of a German nation he continues to represent with dignity both on and off the ice.