From THN's Archive: Little Bit Different

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Little Bit Different - Matt Larkin - Sep. 25, 2017 

THOSE CALIFORNIANS sure played weird tunes on the radio, Arturs Irbe thought. He was riding the bus as a newcomer on the expansion San Jose Sharks during the 1991-92 season, listening to what he assumed was cutting edge American music. In reality, though, it was just the team bus driver’s preferred genre: oldies.

Irbe went an entire year before he found out oldies weren’t modern pop hits. And it’s fitting, isn’t it? The guy spent his career jiving to his own throwback beat. He was a short, stocky goaltender who never changed his equipment and regularly repaired his tattered pads himself. His puckhandling was unorthodox at best and ineffective at worst. And he made his living constantly surprising everyone as one of the sport’s most fascinating underdog stories.

At every stop in his career, he was part of a Cinderella team that did the unthinkable. As a rookie playing for Dynamo Riga in his native Latvia in the late 1980s, he helped his squad make a stunning run to the Soviet League final. In the 1994 NHL playoffs, Irbe’s Sharks, a laughingstock in their first couple seasons, shocked the powerhouse Detroit Red Wings in the first round. Irbe backstopped Latvia past a loaded Team Russia at the 2000 World Championship. And he posted a .938 save percentage in the 2002 playoffs to help the Carolina Hurricanes make an improbable run to the Stanley Cup final.

For those latter two accomplishments, Irbe was even more of a long shot than he let on. In the summer of 1994, his dog, Rambo, went berserk and attacked him, leaving Irbe with a broken finger and severed artery in his left hand. He had major nerve and tendon damage, so the “unorthodox” stickhandling style that we saw was actually Irbe coping with his injury.

He’s more open about it today at 50, living and coaching goalies in Latvia. “Not many people know what kind of challenges I had at the time,” he said. “For example, I had to forever change my stick grip, because I just couldn’t hold the stick anymore. My hand grip was not working on a normal stick, so I had to build it up almost to the size of a tennis racquet handle to control it. Each stick took about 25 minutes to tape. But it’s OK. It teaches you to be more humble and to find a way.”

The injury wasn’t the only obstacle Irbe overcame en route to his 218 NHL victories. He left more net to shoot at than almost every goaltender, not only because he was just 5-foot-8 but because his equipment covered so little of him compared to his Michelin Man counterparts. Irbe loved having his gear broken in and closely contoured to his body. “It was really because of my style of game,” he said. “I needed to feel every edge, every part of the pad, how it bounces. I had to control that puck. At least in my mind, I had to feel.”

NOT MANY PEOPLE KNOW WHAT KIND OF CHALLENGES I HAD AT THE TIME – ARTURS IRBE

His equipment was a part of him, and he reused not just his leg pads, but also his chest and shoulder pads for more than a decade. They didn’t cover his whole body, though, so he took a beating. “There was bruising and black marks but not broken bones,” he said. “But rebounds were controlled, and I knew exactly where the puck was going. I had no other way of competing with those big, strong guys that were coming up. You had to give in order to gain. And I loved my old equipment. I just loved it.”

Irbe remains a plucky overachiever at heart. He was ready to shock the hockey world again as recently as 2014-15 while he was working as the Buffalo Sabres’ oalie coach. A mid-game injury to starter Michal Neuvirth meant backup Jhonas Enroth took the ice, so Irbe sprung into action as the emergency goaltender. He donned whatever mismatched equipment the Sabres could find and headed for the bench. He hadn’t even touched any goalie gear in eight or nine years, but he felt his competitive fire ignite. “My mind starts to race, and I already start to imagine what routine I would have do,” he said. “I said, ‘OK, if I have to go, how many shots should I take in warm-up? What kind of shots? I’m sure they’ll give me a little time.’ It was crazy, but it was exciting. I am not going lie to you.

“I have no interest to go into an amateur game or just go play for fun, but if there would arise an opportunity, I would take punishment from NHL guys. I would go into practice and face the challenge.”

Taking punishment and standing up to a challenge? Sounds like Irbe 20 years ago. The eternal underdog sticks to his old tricks

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