There were 48 goalies on the ice, but one stood out immediately. The USHL’s Youngstown Phantoms were holding a goalie tryout before the 2010-11 season. They already had a starter, and took another goalie high in the previous draft, but it never hurts to add depth.
They got more than that. A 6-foot-5 goalie from Ontario immediately caught the eye of the Youngstown goalie coach, who turned to coach Anthony Noreen and asked, “Who is that kid?”
“We didn’t know Matt O'Connor from Adam,” said Noreen, now the head coach and GM in Youngstown. “We watched him closely, there was no doubt he was the best goalie. He came into our camp, no one knew who he was, undrafted, and made the team.”
One year later, he was the full-time starting goalie for the Phantoms, leading them to their first playoff berth. It was quite a meteoric rise, but not enough of an arrival on the hockey scene to get drafted.
“Some teams were interested,” Noreen said. “You get biased when you’re around him every day. We would sit and go ‘How in the world has nobody drafted this kid?’ We were shocked that nobody did. It happens.”
It might have been frustrating then, but the payoff comes now.
Every year around this time, there’s a college free agent who stands out from the rest, who draws all kinds of interest and signs with an NHL team after his season ends. O’Connor is that guy this year. He’s the starting goalie on a Boston University team with championship aspirations -- and it won’t just be BU fans watching every save closely.
According to an NHL source, there are 14 teams that can be characterized as having strong interest in signing him. Five of those teams have already offered to play him in the NHL this season in order to burn a year on what would be a two-year entry-level deal. That's a rarity for a college free-agent goaltender.
The Buffalo Sabres are aggressively pursuing him but they’re far from alone. The teams offering to play a college goalie down the stretch aren’t the ones fighting for playoff position, so it doesn’t take a math major to figure out who else is heavily in the mix.
It’s a safe bet that Edmonton, Carolina and Arizona are among the interested. But it’s not just bad teams with obvious goalie holes; the Dallas Stars, for instance, are also interested. A lot of teams are.
And what’s not to like? O’Connor has size, plays on a high-profile team and has put up strong numbers in his junior year at BU. He’s 18-3-4 with a .927 save percentage, appearing in his most games in one season since taking the Phantoms to the playoffs.
Most importantly, he’s got the one thing every team wants in its young goalies: Size.
“He’s a real tall, lean kid. To me, he’s just starting to scratch the surface of what he can be. He’s so long and lean,” said a Western Conference scout. “He’s gotten a lot stronger in the legs. There’s an awful lot of traffic around the net in college hockey. You have to protect yourself and be good on the deck. He’s worked hard to refine his game.”
One of the benefits to playing college hockey is the time it gives these players to add physical strength and practice time. Scouts have noticed that his game has sharpened during his time in Boston.
He’s gotten stronger. He can own the area at the top of the crease. He’s able to compete for space better against forwards. His physical game is starting to catch up to a goalie everyone describes as very mature and focused.
He’s expected to get a degree this summer, an indication that academics are just as important to him as athletics. That focus is part of the reason Noreen believes O’Connor has been able to leverage a growth spurt into a possible NHL career.
“He was very determined as a student and very determined as a hockey player,” Noreen said. “He treated it like a pro. His preparation was as good as it gets. He always put in extra work. If he had a bad game, you never questioned his preparation.”
The other important question: How does he project as an NHL goalie?
Like other college free agents in the past, we’re likely not talking about a future star here, although you never know with goalies. For instance, last year’s hottest college free agent was defenseman Christian Folin, who signed with the Wild, played his one game to burn a year on the entry-level deal and has appeared in 37 games this season with Minnesota. He’s added cheap defensive depth on an entry-level contract -- no small consideration in a cap era. And it cost Minnesota nothing other than the effort to sign him.
That’s the biggest appeal here. You’re getting a potential NHL goalie without giving up an asset.
Another scout has liked O’Connor for years, but conservatively projects him as an NHL backup.
“He’s a big guy who just needed some maturity to his game and he looks like he found it. He wasn’t very good last year, but he’s huge and he’s using his size and is much more efficient than he used to be,” he said. “He’s got a ways to go to be a starter [in the NHL], but he’s certainly quality enough to progress into a solid No. 2.”
O'Connor's focus is on winning games right now in college but at some point, he’ll have to decide the route he wants to take. It might be tempting to go directly to the NHL, play a game immediately and get the clock ticking on an NHL career, but the fastest path isn’t always the best.
It might be smarter not to play in the NHL at all this season, especially if it’s for an awful team, but instead find an organization that would let him develop further in the AHL the next two seasons.
“If I was his agent, I’d be looking at opportunity in the American League where I can go play 40 or 50 games in the AHL next year,” said the scout.
That hasn’t been ruled out. Although, like any red-blooded hockey player, he wants to taste the NHL as soon as possible. It might be too hard to pass that route up.
There may not be an immediate signing the moment O’Connor’s season ends. It may be a 48- or 72-hour process that includes last-second visits. He’s waited this long for the opportunity, there's no reason to rush it.