Hockey goaltenders are a strange breed.
Even Taylor Dakers admits that, and he's been stopping pucks for longer than he cares to remember, and did so well enough to get drafted by the San Jose Sharks.
Dakers was one of a select group of eight coaches at the World Pro Goaltending School taking place at the Elksentre. Thirty-eight goalies from various parts of the province signed up for the five-day camp, the most ever in its eight-year history in Prince George.
"The mix of the personalities of goalies is a lot different than a standard player hockey camp, they're very unique, they're extroverted and they're not afraid to be themselves," said Dakers, 26, who played two years of pro hockey after he got drafted by the Sharks in 2005 as a member of the Kootenay Ice.
Dakers is now a goaltending coach for the Red Deer Rebels, while World Pro Goaltending founder Tyler Love coaches with the Portland Winter Hawks. Their summer camp, the biggest hockey goalie school in Western Canada, also visits Kamloops, Victoria, Red Deer, Medicine Hat, Calgary and Saskatoon.
Although it lasts just a week each summer, World Pro tries to maintain contact with its students throughout the hockey season. Love, a former Prince George Cougar, encourages his young goalies to attend World Pro's one-on-one refresher lessons in Calgary or Kamloops and to enroll in the one-day winter clinic it hosts in Prince George.
"If you get a chance to work with a kid for five days you'll spend 15 hours on the ice with them, so it's a pretty good connection," said Love, 36, who backed up Chris Mason with the Cougars in 1995-96. "Goalies all have a special bond and it means a lot to a goalie if you can talk to them and give them a little boost, even if its only every few months, just to try to keep them on the right track."
Goalie camps are a relatively recent phenomenon -- most having sprouted up in the past 15 years or less -- long after Shane Warren's days as a junior A goalie for the St. John's Shamrocks in Newfoundland were behind him. Shane, the father of Nathan Warren, starting goalie for the Cariboo Cougars major midget team last season, recognizes how much it's helped 18-year-old Nathan to have regular coaching from Love, starting when Nathan was nine.
"Nathan is probably moving on to the WHL or BCHL and Tyler calls him every week or two and talks to him to help him out with any of the problems he's having," said Shane Warren. "In minor hockey, there aren't a lot of camps for goaltenders. I don't think Nathan would be where he is without these guys."
Now living in Kamloops, Love first brought the annual summer camp to the city in 2006.
Homegrown goalies Quinn Ferris, Mitch Profeit and Marcus Beesley, who attended World Pro Goaltending camps throughout their minor hockey careers, have also found summer employment when the camp comes to Prince George, as have midget- and junior-aged players who get paid to take shots on the older age-group goalies.
The youngest group (eight -11-year-olds) gets five hours of training, while the oldest (14-17-year-olds) are there for eight hours per day.
