Goaltenders are notorious for being a little out there. In a role that's as much mental as it is physical -- if not even more so -- it's critical to keep a routine and stay focused on the job. The job, of course, is being pelted with pucks at around 100 mph in front of thousands of fans.
It's also pretty thankless. Goalies are often the first scapegoat when a team falls apart, and are rarely remembered as the ones who paved the way during success.
But Devan Dubnyk has been around the block a few times. He's learned to deal with pressure and injuries and less-than-flattering comments; conversely, he's learned to temper praise and keep his head in the game, focusing on himself and what works for him.
He's not a guy to delve too far inside his head and shut off from the team. He's not a guy to commandeer the pregame music or dictate game-day press conferences. He's not a guy to panic if something is off in his routine. Instead, he goes with the flow -- and he's a better goalie for it.
"I kind of picked that up in junior, where I wanted to make sure I stayed away from the superstitious stuff," Dubnyk said. "In junior, there's a lot of same-day bus rides of like four, five, six hours with weather, and sometimes you showed up to the rink and you had to put your stuff on and get ready for warmup or you're even late for the game.
"All these things, there's so many variables that could happen that I wanted to stay well away from the superstitious stuff because you never want something like that to have to affect what's going on on the ice."
More than a few years and a few teams later, the same philosophy has followed Dubnyk to the Minnesota Wild. The veteran goaltender follows the same general game day routine of his teammates: breakfast at Xcel Energy Center before morning skate, lunch with some teammates, a nap, then back to the arena for the looming game.
There is no meal he insists on eating, nor any pregame music Dubnyk must listen to, despite his 'opportune' perch next to the iPod dock in the Wild locker room.
"There's a subwoofer right here! I wouldn't call that prime real estate. I don't even know what we're listening to, my brain's bleeding by the time I'm going out on the ice with the sub here," Dubnyk said with a laugh.
"No, I'm pretty relaxed with my approach so there's nothing I need to listen to to try to get amped up. I think if I got amped up for a game it probably wouldn't look good for anybody."
Be that as it may, there's more than a few times a television camera has caught Dubnyk smiling widely after making a huge save or closing out a penalty kill. While that's in part due to Dubnyk's big personality, it's also a testament to his off-ice training that he's able to keep his game at such a high caliber.
"It's really about maintenance," Dubnyk said. "You always want to make sure you're keeping your hips strong and your muscles kind of in and around your hips loose and strong because that kind of affects everything. That's one thing I've kind of learned, you know, you kind of take care of that area and that takes care of everything else, rather than if something hurts somewhere else trying to specifically look after that. You just try to maintain as much as you can and you really try to make sure you don't get hurt.
"You're always gonna have bumps and bruises and your body's gonna be sore some days, but as long as you can stay healthy enough to be playing that's the most important thing."
And that's something only a goalie would say.
