Emery no weak link in Senators success

[hockeyfan]

http://www.nhl.com/nhl/app/?service=page&page=NewsPage&articleid=310937

Hide behind his mask? Not Raymond Robert Emery.

It’s easy to concentrate on the off-ice stories that revolve around the 24-year-old goaltender from Cayuga, Ontario, just outside of Hamilton.

In a rather peculiar rookie season in the NHL with the Senators a year ago, Emery ate a cockroach to win a $500 bet from teammate Daniel Alfredsson, invited newspaper photographers to document a tattoo excursion, dyed his hair blonde and tried to wear a mask that pictured controversial boxer Mike Tyson.

The art on his torso and arms includes the initials of his parents and brothers, an African symbol for his jersey No. 1, a Libra sign, his nickname, “Razorâ€, along with the words, "Anger is a Gift."

Just another weird goaltender? Not even close.

"Am I an angry man? Not at all," Emery said before a game in St. Louis in late March. "I think I'm a pretty easy guy to talk to and pretty loose around people in general. It's just in competitive situations. That’s when I kind of flip that switch and all I want to do is win."

You mean you snap?

"I’d say it’s the competitive fire coming out in me, the focus," Emery said, grinning after he heard the words he had just uttered. "I've kind of learned to tone it down a bit. But no way do I want to lose my competitive edge ... not playing without emotion."

Buffalo Sabres fans will grouse about that impish grin on Emery’s face as he skated confidently -- without his mask -- to center ice to fight then-Sabres goaltender Marty Biron during a 12-man melee Feb. 22 in HSBC Arena.

Emery still is fighting -- like he has done all his life -- only now it's for respect.

Every round leading up to this year’s Stanley Cup Final, Ray has been considered by skeptics as the weak link in the Ottawa Senators’ run for the first NHL title won by a Canadian team since the 1993 Montreal Canadiens. But Emery is used to having his credentials as a top goalie questioned every step of the way.

But here he is, having played every minute of Ottawa's 12-3 run in the playoffs, with three shutouts, a microscopic 1.95 goals-against average, plus a pair of overtime wins. Forget the fact that he was just a fourth-round draft choice, 99th overall, in the 2001 Entry Draft.

"I've never doubted myself," Emery told me. "If there's something to compete for I'm fine, it doesn't matter what it is. Whether it's summer time and I'm golfing or hockey or whatever."

"Above all the rest, Ray Emery is a winner," said Senators teammate Jason Spezza, who roomed with Emery for part of his three-year apprenticeship with Binghamton of the American Hockey League. "He's a big-game guy. He loves the challenge.

"In the second round of the playoffs when everyone was downplaying the matchup of him vs. Marty Brodeur, I think deep down that kind of matchup brought the best out in Ray."

Some say Ray Emery refuses to fit in. But he’s not a rebel. He’s not a tattooed freak. This is a young man who, before he had some goaltending success, thought he might become an architect. But those competitive juices and that anger at losing consumed the son of Paul and Sharlene Emery.

The bottom line? He’s a winner.

He won his first nine NHL games a season ago, breaking a 23-year-old NHL record. He stepped in when Dominik Hasek went down with a groin injury at the Olympics and amassed 12 wins that March to tie Bernie Parent's 32-year-old record for most wins in a month. His 23-11-4 record helped get the Senators the top seed in the Eastern Conference and he authored a five-game, first-round triumph over the defending Stanley Cup champion Tampa Bay Lightning, before losing to Buffalo in Round 2.

This season, he posted a 33-16-6 record, with a 2.47 GAA, a .918 save percentage and five shutouts.

But the gist of every story comes back to everything but the kick-saves-and-a-beauty.

"Even when I was young ... like grade 7 and 8 ... I was a little different," Emery laughed. "I loved music, still do, and I’d be rockin’ in silk shirts. Stuff like that."

I remember Hall of Fame goaltender Patrick Roy once commenting on how he heard former Dodgers great right-hander Orel Hershiser saying how he would get into his starts on the mound by humming hymns all throughout the game. Hershiser did it to take his mind off other things, to help him focus on what was at hand.

Welcome the latest athlete with a song in his heart and head ... Ray Emery.

"I’ve got kind of an eclectic taste in music," he said. "My mom got me started on country music and, believe it or not, my dad taught me about hard rock sounds like Def Leppard and Metallica. And my buddies were into rap. So, I guess you can say I never know what kind of mood I’m in when I step into the goal crease.

"You know how you get a song stuck in your head? Well, I kind of put a song in my head and take it from there. Nuts, huh?"

Emery says he can even be overheard at times humming a tune to himself ... if you get close enough to him in goal without facing a couple of rights or lefts to the chops.

Why does it always come back to boxing? Well, that’s another of those interesting tidbits you learn about Emery. He’s a boxing fan. He watches classic championships bouts and has on occasion had the features of Jack Johnson, Marvin Hagler, Mike Tyson or George Chuvalo painted on his mask.

"I guess you could say I’ve been into nearly everything at one time or another," Emery chuckled. "I did yoga with Jason (Spezza) for a year in Binghamton. I've taken boxing lessons, tennis. I get addicted to different things, and then something else will catch my eye."

Emery, a young black man playing in a white man’s sport, may feel the need to express himself as an individual, and perhaps the lone athletic endeavor more isolated than playing goaltender is boxing.

Emery has constantly felt the need to express himself as an individual, and perhaps the lone athletic endeavor more isolated than playing goaltender is boxing. Although hockey is a team sport, the goalie often stands alone under the spotlight and many times must do the job himself. A prizefighter comes out of his corner unaided and with no place to hide.

Just then, Emery flashed his boxing knowledge, saying, "Chuvalo was a Canadian. That’s important to me. More than 40 years ago, he went the distance against Muhammad Ali at Maple Leaf Gardens. He faced long odds ... and he stayed on his feet."

There was a pause after Emery mentioned that fact. He clearly was daydreaming a little.

What we’ve got here is a goaltender who seems to be able to rise to the occasion, no matter what the odds, no matter what anyone else thinks.

"It’s interesting that Ray is facing J.S. Giguere in the Finals," Senators coach Bryan Murray said. "I was G.M. in Anaheim in 2003 when Jiggy sort of came from nowhere in the playoffs against Detroit and then couldn’t lose and became kind of a folk hero along the way.

"To me, Ray is in that same sort of position. When you're a young player going through the first time you’re always going to be questioned. But Ray handles pressure in all situations well. I’m confident he'll get the respect he deserves. We all know what he’s done for this hockey club."

Oh, yeah, one more step of a different kind along the way to Disneyland and the Stanley Cup Final.

The always stylish Ray Emery is currently driving an orange Lamborghini. It’s a loaner while his white Hummer is repaired. The car was damaged after Game 4 of the playoffs against the Devils when Emery overslept and raced to the airport to catch the Sens’ charter to New Jersey and was involved in a three-car fender bender.

The plane took off without him, but he caught the next flight out of Ottawa and made 27 saves the next day to clinch the series.

"I had to apologize to all of my teammates," Emery said. "I nearly let them down."

Most of all, Ray nearly let himself down. And he’s challenging himself every day to be better.

That’s the sign of a real winner.