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.