Friday morning, the Dallas Stars hold their regular game day practice.
The topic of discussion in the locker room at the Dallas Stars’ school club? Zachary Fucale, author of a 2-0 shutout with the Washington Capitals, the day before. In his very first game in the NHL. At 26 years old. Eight years after being drafted.
“We have guys who played with him. Curtis McKenzie, our captain, played with him for a year with the Chicago Wolves. When you’ve been pro for six or seven years, there is always someone who knows you, ”says Jérémy Grégoire, star striker and great friend of Fucale.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, PRESS ARCHIVES
Jeremy Grégoire
When we say great friend… Grégoire had just hung up on FaceTime with Fucale when he answered the call from Press. “He wasn’t quite sure what hit him and he was speechless. That says a lot! », Says Grégoire, laughing.
Gregory was laughing because as Fucale’s former roommate he knows his friend can be talkative.
“The number of messages he’s received from guys who’ve played five games with him… He realizes that his infectious energy has touched a lot of people. ”
The difficult passage
But as a former roommate, Grégoire also knows that Fucale had a hard time before going there. The Canadiens’ second-round pick, the very first goalie drafted in the 2013 session, Memorial Cup champion, the Quebecer had a great junior career, but quickly ran into a wall when he joined the pros. After a full first season with the IceCaps in the American League (AHL), Fucale began to commute between AHL and ECHL.
“Zach didn’t have it easy in Montreal. Several times, he could have picked up his stock and stopped everything, recalls Grégoire. I was in the front row. I was in his condo in Laval when he left for Brampton to play in the ECHL. It was hard on the ego. ”
Fucale’s father, Jack, is less diplomatic. “They took everything away from his confidence,” he confided, passing through the microphone of the podcast of 98.5 FM and Press, Zone exit. They made zero of that, zero. I prefer not to go there. Zach is doing great, that’s what’s important. The past is the past. We will say that this is the course he had to take. ”
The culmination of the difficult years with the Canadian certainly occurred on March 6, 2018. The team is then dropped from the playoff race, Carey Price is injured, and Antti Niemi has just fallen in action, which forces the recall of Fucale emergency.
Charlie Lindgren gets the start, but the Devils lead 4-0 after 20 minutes, 6-2 after two periods. Everyone expected to see Fucale in relief, but Lindgren finished the meeting. After the match, Claude Julien explains that he wanted Lindgren to get out of adversity “rather than give him an easy exit by removing him from the match”.
“Of course he would have liked to play! But he didn’t hold it against the organization either, underlines Olivier Gervais, a close friend and associate of Fucale in his Living Sisu project, as well as the Paramount school of guards. I think all of Quebec was disappointed that night, but Zach remained positive. He took it constructively. ”
PHOTO PATRICK FADEL
Zachary Fucale (center) and Olivier Gervais (full right)
“He took it with a grain of salt,” recalls Grégoire. He said to himself, “I didn’t come home because I have things left to work on.” He always wanted to earn it, instead of coming back out of charity.
“Last year, he had the best average in the American League [1,80]. And there he had a good start to the season in the American League. He deserved it. ”
A contract and a reminder
After three years in the organization of the CH, Fucale began to walk. Contracts with the organization of the Golden Knights, then that of the Lightning, contracts during which he will play more in ECHL than in the American League. Then, just before the pandemic, he went into exile in Germany as the third guardian. Don’t look for that in his HockeyDB page; he didn’t have time to play before everything was canceled.
“He said he was thinking of making the jump to the other side [en Europe] », Says Olivier Gervais. Allain Roy, Fucale’s agent, confirms that the KHL was then “an option”. “He was watching this,” Gervais adds. We even wondered how we were going to work together with the jet lag! ”
But Fucale had a “very good discussion” with Marc Lavigne, Allain Roy’s assistant. “Marc reminded him that he was still young and that he should think about it,” says Roy. The shutdown of activities, due to the pandemic, put all this on hold.
Which brings us to the summer of 2020. Fucale worked at the hockey school with Olivier Gervais, who tells the rest.
“He comes to me and says, ‘Oli, I have to disembark.” I said to him: “Well no, we have young people on the ice!” He said to me: “It’s the GM from Washington calling me.” I said to her: “Goddess!” I gathered the young people, I told them that we were going to work in groups today and that we were going to travel! ”
From that call, Fucale landed a two-pronged contract with the Capitals. In 2020-2021, he played only one game in ECHL, the other 11 in the American League. Another strong start this season (1.73 average) got him a call-back when Vitek Vanecek got injured. And that got him the net Thursday night in Detroit.
Fucale gave it back to them by blocking the 21 pucks directed towards him. And he did it on his own terms: he deserved it.
A solution ?
On Twitter Thursday evening, Martin Biron recalled the harsh reality of goalies from the three junior circuits of Canada (CHL). “Fucale is the perfect example of why we have to review the development of goalkeepers,” wrote Biron, a former goalkeeper turned analyst. At 20, CHL goalies are often too young to play in the AHL. Europeans are 24 or 25 when they come to North America. Big difference. Allain Roy nods. “Often, a 24-year-old European arrives and he walks past your young guard,” recalls the agent. Fucale was also a victim of this phenomenon in the Canadian when Charlie Lindgren, older than a year and a half, arrived from the university. Is there a solution to promote the development of goalies from Canadian junior hockey? “The problem is the fear of ECHL,” said Roy. There’s a lot of negativity associated with ECHL, but it’s very good for a goalie to play there. I have Philipp Grubauer as a client, he did this for a year. ”