Burnside: James Reimer continues performing, whether he gets recognition or not

Scott Burnside
Scott Burnside
Burnside: James Reimer continues performing, whether he gets recognition or not

Ray Petkau was a young agent at the time.

A longtime resident of Steinbach, Manitoba, Petkau had been asked last-minute to join a recreation hockey tournament organized by a local church group.

Petkau was late and jumped on the ice just as the game was starting. At the other end was a netminder he didn’t recognize.

“The goalie was just tremendous in that game,” Petkau said.

Throughout the tournament, the netminder continued to impress because, well, he simply didn’t belong with this particular group of beer leaguers. Petkau was impressed enough to seek him out assuming it was a goalie in his late teens.

“I found out he was 13 and that he’d just recently taken up goaltending,” Petkau said. “I already knew this guy’s got something.”

That goaltender was James Reimer and the meeting took place some two decades ago.

“He wasn’t technically strong,” Petkau said. “He didn’t really stop the puck the way goalies are taught to stop the puck. But he had a sixth sense of where the puck may be when things don’t go as planned, which happens a lot during the game.”

The agent spoke to Reimer’s parents and as it turns out Petkau and Reimer’s mother were distantly related. And so began a relationship that has carried through 400 NHL games for Reimer. At times overlooked. At times underappreciated – unless you shared a dressing room with him – Reimer has persevered.

Not only persevered.

Through the first third of this season Reimer, 33, has turned in performances that see him at the top of most critical goaltending statistics including save percentage (.936, third among netminders with at least 15 appearances and goals-against average (1.99, fifth using the same parameters), while also excelling in analytics categories.

His strong play is one of the main reasons the San Jose Sharks continue to hang around the Western Conference playoff discussion.

“I’m telling you I think he’s been their most valuable player,” Bret Hedican, a long-time NHL defenseman and Stanley Cup winner said. “I’ve never seen him play this well.”

Hedican has as good a vantage point for the evolution of the Sharks as any as the team’s color analyst.

He recalls Reimer’s first, brief tenure with the Sharks, when he was acquired by the playoff-bound team at the 2016 trade deadline from Toronto.

Now, Hedican said, there is a kind of Zen-ness to Reimer.

“Sometimes something clicks at a certain point of life and a certain point of your career as a player and they stop trying to be somebody else and they just get comfortable in their own skin,” Hedican said.

They become completely comfortable playing their own game not someone else’s game.

“And I feel like when I look at James Reimer that’s what I’m witnessing, a guy that’s just found out who he is, he’s making the game right now look easy,” Hedican added.

It’s not just the level of play for Reimer; it’s how that level of play has fit in with a team that has known little but disappointment and dysfunction since a trip to the Western Conference Final in 2019.

Hedican recalled how GM Doug Wilson had told reporters after last season that one of the team’s top priorities was to upgrade its goaltending. The Sharks acquired Adin Hill from Arizona. Hill, at the time, had played in 49 NHL games and Hedican admitted it seemed like a lot of trust to put in a No. 1 goalie with such a limited resume.

Fewer than two weeks later, the Sharks signed Reimer, an unrestricted free agent, to a two-year deal with a $2.250 million cap hit.

“And I thought, okay, well at least they’ve got some stability there with James Reimer,” Hedican said.

Even though the two continue to split goaltending starts, it’s clear that Reimer is the team’s top netminder as Hill sports a 2.90 GAA and .900 save percentage.

“He’s just a warm guy,” Hedican said of Reimer. “You just sense this personality. He’s just being himself. Who wouldn’t want to play for a guy like that?

“For a team that was really searching for a goaltender just to give them a stop, a big stop in a part of the game, boy he’s blown it out of the water.”

If it was just a goalie playing 400 NHL games — which Reimer did last week for the San Jose Sharks — it would still be a compelling tale. But that the well-respected Reimer has managed the feat has created a feel-good story that stands in stark contrast to the doom and gloom of so much of what has transpired around the NHL — and the game and indeed the entire globe — in recent months.

Petkau, who recently took up goaltending in his 40s to understand better what so many of his clients — including Reimer and former Vezina Trophy winner Connor Hellebuyck — go through on a daily basis, has worked with Reimer on a number of projects away from the rink over the years. These projects include building a school in Uganda and an orphanage.

“We’ve gone through a lot of highs and lows together,” Petkau said. “Lots of 3 a.m. calls when he was younger, not so many now. He’s just come so far with just being a mature, veteran player.

“The kind of person that James is, the moral compass is there. He’s got great ethics, great work ethic. Just a real honest player, honest person, great family man, great communicator.”

There’s an adorable picture on social media of Reimer’s daughters aged 2 and 4, holding balloons that read ‘400’.

Reimer laughs that he actually stumbled on the balloons in a back room of their home in the San Jose area when he’d returned from a road trip still at 399 wins, after a minor injury prevented him from making his scheduled 400th appearance.

“I ruined the ‘400’ balloons,” Reimer joked.

Not surprisingly it didn’t lessen the moment for Reimer or his family.

And while he is reticent to talk about himself as many hockey players are, he acknowledged the milestone has given him pause and allowed him to reflect on his journey.

“I think it’s different for goalies, right?” Reimer said.

1,000 games for a skater is a monumental achievement.

“I don’t really know what the big milestone is for goalies,” Reimer added. “Is it 500? Is it 750?”

But 400 is a line in the sand to be sure, even if Reimer wonders out loud whether there is really that much difference between 400 and 401.

“But it was kind of cool,” Reimer acknowledged. “For me. I guess everybody has a special story, you don’t get to the NHL without people in your life.”

And so a milestone allows you to think on those building blocks.

“You remember all the people and things,” he said. “People who sacrificed and the things that kind of fell into place that allowed me to play.”

Reimer is a devout Christian, so that’s where the story always begins and ends for him.

“For me faith is a big thing,” Reimer said. “I feel throughout my career, God had this in store for me. So I try to be thankful every day.”

And then parents and siblings who supported financially and in the commitment of time that hockey demands.

“It’s incredible,” he said.

And then his wife of more than decade, April.

“Then your wife becomes that main support, praying for you and encouraging you,” Reimer said.

Although the kids are too young to be too worried about schools and friends when it comes to career planning, last summer presented another fork in the road for Reimer, who was an unrestricted free agent that didn’t seem to fit into the plans of his former team in Carolina.

Reimer was familiar with San Jose and he felt there were opportunities in the offing, even if there was an outward perception this was a team in transition, if not outright decline.

“I think a big thing for me was you wanted to have an opportunity to play and you wanted to have an opportunity to win,” Reimer said. “Those are the two reasons you play, right?”

Management, led by GM Doug Wilson, made it clear that getting back to the playoffs after two straight years out of the postseason was a priority.

“Those were big things for me,” Reimer said. “I was excited about this team and talent we had.”

Still, it was hard to imagine then that Reimer’s arrival would have such a pivotal impact on the Sharks’ fortunes.

“It’s kind of fun playing that role where you’re trying to prove people wrong,” Reimer said. “I think we’ve really played pretty well and put ourselves in a pretty good spot.”

And, yes, he has enjoyed personal success, although Reimer has seen lots of ups and downs along the way to know not to get too carried away.

“The first part of the season has gone well and you’re happy when things go your way,” Reimer said. “But I’ve played long enough to know that there’s time when you play well and pucks still go in. And times you play bad and pucks stay out. It’s the wild world of sports right?”

It’s funny how these things work out but Reimer has for some time spent the summer in Kelowna at Net360 Goalie Camp, founded by Petkau and trainer Adam Francilia. As it turns out, Francilia is close with San Jose goaltending coach Evgeni Nabokov, who describes Francilia as “the goalie guru.” And so the symmetry with Reimer returning to San Jose and working daily with Nabokov has been a positive thing.

“I feel like that’s been helping me a lot this year,” Reimer said. “Working with Nabby, he really sees the game really well. He understands when to push and when not to push.”

The kind of goaltending that Reimer has consistently provided the Sharks “it’s huge,” Nabokov said.

“Every team wants the goaltending like this, but not everybody can get that,” Nabokov added. “It’s not easy.”

Nabokov said it’s been a treat to work with both Hill and Reimer.

“But Reims is in that special mode right now I call it,” Nabokov said. “Where literally he plays, he just calms everybody down. That’s the definition of confident, good goaltending right there.”

Mike McKenna, a regular contributor at DailyFaceoff.com and my partner on The Suitcase And The Scribe podcast, shared a training camp in Florida with Reimer one season and said the popular netminder was “very much as advertised.”

“He couldn’t have been nicer,” McKenna said.

If you’re an NHL goaltender, you are de facto one of the top goaltenders in the world. But that sometimes gets lost for netminders who are considered journeymen or ‘average’.

“I think James is more mobile than people sometimes give him credit for,” McKenna said. “His skating is pretty strong – something that hinders his goalie partner Adin Hill. James has never had great hands or puckhandling skills, but he’s strong from a positional standpoint.

“What I really admire is that he just goes about his business. Whether he’s starting, backing up…whatever his label may be, he’s still just James. He doesn’t seem to let it affect him.”

McKenna recently went through the NHL’s goalie tandems and felt that if the Sharks didn’t feel compelled to keep trying to shoehorn Hill into a starting role. the Sharks would be a playoff team.

“Because Reimer has been significantly better,” McKenna said. “I won’t say he’s reinvented himself but he’s certainly in a good spot. I’m happy for him. Class act.”

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