Hi there,

Even in the midst of what’s turning into, to put it kindly, a very tough season, there are still signs of love of the game from these Vancouver Canucks.

I was chatting recently with Jiri Patera, the mostly unknown third-string goalie for the Canucks, about his journey. The backup goalies, the third-stringers — these guys are some of the best guys to chat with.

Their whole lives they come up being the guy, and then they make the NHL and discover that they’re good enough to be here but not good enough to lock in a full-time No. 1 gig.

That’s a mental challenge as much as anything. And in most cases, you’ve just got to have the ability to set aside your ego and accept how things have shaken out.

“Just try to do the best with what I get and with what I can, and focus on what I can control and just go from there,” he said. Patera, by the way, speaks without a hint of an accent: he played three seasons of junior in North America, first in the USHL, then two with the WHL’s Brandon Wheat Kings.

What makes Patera so notable as a No. 3 was how close he was to seeing it all wash away because of a piece of bad injury luck.

Playing last season for Abbotsford, Patera destroyed his right shoulder making a save. At the time, no one outside the team knew how bad the injury was. But the veteran goalie was frank with me in the dressing room last month. He named the injury and was happy to talk about it.

“I tore my labrum and fractured the socket,” he explained. At first, his doctor feared he’d be gone for a year or perhaps even more. But after surgery, the prognosis was for just four or five months.

He got to work and was back in game-ready shape… just as the Abbotsford Canucks started to soar. They won 11 in a row. They roared into the playoffs. Arturs Silovs was red-hot and so was backup Nikita Tolopilo.

The door just never opened again for Patera. He became a Black Ace — a guy there in an emergency, but without a real hope of seeing the ice.

“It was so mentally hard,” he said. “Just, like, trying to stay positive and just trying to be the best I can be on the ice. But, you know, it was a little bit difficult because the extra guys didn’t skate with the main group.”

And yet here he is, back in the NHL, bouncing up and down. When we spoke, it was right after he’d finally made his first start with the NHL Canucks, where he was lit up for seven goals.

“Obviously not the best start,” he quipped with a grin. Take it as it comes, he knows.

And at the very least, he gets a front-row seat to watch his teammates from last spring — Linus Karlsson, Max Sasson and Arshdeep Bains — chase their own NHL dreams.

“It’s just so fun,” he said. And he would know.

Patrick Johnston

Hockey writer

The Province | Vancouver Sun

You’re getting a taste of our Canucks coverage right now, but there’s a whole lot more waiting for you behind the paywall. For a limited time, you can unlock six months of unlimited access for just $6, our best deal of the year.

A subscription opens the door to every in-depth story, analysis piece, and behind-the-scenes feature we publish. And if you want everything delivered straight to your inbox, you can also sign up for more newsletters that offer regular updates on local news, opinion, sports, and better living.