Damian Rhodes

Damian Rhodes
Date of birth	May 28, 1969
place of birth	Saint Paul , Minnesota , USA
size	183 cm
Weight	91 kg
position	goalkeeper
Catch hand	Left
Draft
NHL Entry Draft	1987 , 6th round, 112th position Toronto Maple Leafs
Career stations
1987-1990	Michigan Technological University
1990-1991	Newmarket Saints
1991-1993	St. John's Maple Leafs
1993-1995	Toronto Maple Leafs
1995-1999	Ottawa Senators
1999-2002	Atlanta Thrashers
2002-2004	Lowell Lock Monsters

Damian Rhodes (born May 28, 1969 in Saint Paul , Minnesota ) is a former American ice hockey goalkeeper who played for the Toronto Maple Leafs , Ottawa Senators and Atlanta Thrashers in the National Hockey League from 1991 to 2002 .

Career

Damian Rhodes began his high school career with the Richfield Spartans in 1985 and played for the team for two years. In the 1987 NHL Entry Draft he was selected by the Toronto Maple Leafs in the sixth round at position 112. But he first went to Michigan Technological University and played for the college team for three years.

In the fall of 1990, Rhodes moved to the AHL to the Newmarket Saints , the Toronto farm team . He did not have a good season, but was allowed to play a game with the Maple Leafs in the NHL , where he conceded only one goal.

In the following two years he got no missions in the NHL and continued to play for the farm team, which was now called St. John's Maple Leafs . There he brought convincing performances and made it into the NHL squad in the 1993/94 season , where he played 22 games as Félix Potvin's back-up goalkeeper . He took this role for another year and a half before he was transferred to the New York Islanders on January 23, 1996 and on the same day to the Ottawa Senators .

There he took over the role of the goalkeeper. In the summer of 1996, another goalkeeper , Ron Tugnutt, joined the team with whom he shared the missions. He had his best season in Ottawa in 1998/99 , as he won more games than he lost for the first time with the team that was formed just six years earlier. There were 13 defeats for 22 wins.

In the summer of 1999 he was transferred to the Atlanta Thrashers , who were before their first season in the NHL. Although the team used a total of five goalkeepers over the course of the season, Rhodes and Norm Maracle were basically the regular goalkeepers. But since new teams usually need several years to be able to keep up in the NHL, the season was not particularly good for Rhodes and he could only win very few games, and he was out longer due to an injury. In the 2000/01 season he shared the stakes with Milan Hnilička and played the following season only as a back-up goalie.

In the summer of 2002, Rhodes did not make the leap into the NHL roster of the Thrashers because he had to undergo an operation on a hernia. He played during the 2002/03 season in the AHL with the Lowell Lock Monsters and in the East Coast Hockey League with the Greenville Grrrowl . His final season was in 2003/04 when he played seven more games for Lowell. Then he ended his career.

Special

Damian Rhodes is the first NHL goalkeeper to shutout and score in one game . On January 2, 1999, it was 1-0 for the Ottawa Senators against the New Jersey Devils when a penalty was displayed against Senators and New Jersey goalkeeper Martin Brodeur left the field to replace another outfield. A Devils player who was in the third of the Senator wanted to return the puck to a teammate on the blueline, but the puck missed the teammate and landed in his own goal. Since Rhodes was the last Senators player to touch the puck, the goal was credited to him. The game ended 6-0.

NHL statistics

	Seasons	Games	Victory cut	Conceded goal	Shutout
Regular season	10	309	0.320	2.84	12
Playoffs	3	12	0.417	2.19	0

Web links

• Damian Rhodes at hockeydb.com (English)
• Damian Rhodes at hockeygoalies.org