Tom Barrasso

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Tom Barrasso bigraphy, stories - American ice hockey goaltender

Tom Barrasso : biography

March 31, 1965 –

Thomas Patrick Barrasso (born March 31, 1965) is an American professional ice hockey coach and former player. Barrasso was a goaltender for 18 seasons in the National Hockey League for the Buffalo Sabres, Pittsburgh Penguins, Ottawa Senators, Carolina Hurricanes, Toronto Maple Leafs, and St. Louis Blues. He was the only goaltender to ever play in the NHL directly from high school, without having played major junior, college, or some other form of professional hockey first. He was the youngest winner of the league’s Vezina Trophy for best goaltender, as an 18-year old rookie in 1984. Barrasso was a member of successive Stanley Cup championship teams in 1991 and 1992 with the Pittsburgh Penguins. He was inducted as a member of the United States Hockey Hall of Fame in 2009.

After retiring from active play, Barrasso was an assistant coach and in charge of goaltending development for the Carolina Hurricanes for five years. In June 2012, Barrasso joined former Hurricanes coach Paul Maurice on the coaching staff at Metallurg Magnitogorsk of the Kontinental Hockey League.

Awards and achievements

  • 1984 – Calder Trophy (Top rookie in NHL)
  • 1984 – Vezina Trophy (Top goaltender in NHL)
  • 1984 – NHL First All-Star Team
  • 1985 – NHL Second All-Star Team
  • 1985 – William M. Jennings Trophy (Team with fewest goals allowed – shared with Bob Sauve)
  • 1985 – Played in NHL All-Star Game
  • 1991 – Stanley Cup champion (Pittsburgh Penguins)
  • 1992 – Stanley Cup champion (Pittsburgh Penguins)
  • 1993 – NHL Second All-Star Team
  • 2002 – Olympic ice hockey silver medalist (Team USA)
  • 2007 – Inducted into the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame
  • 2009 – Inducted into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame

International play

Barrasso won an Olympic silver medal as part of the U.S. national men’s ice hockey team at the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City. He played in one game, an 8–1 victory over Belarus on February 18.

Barrasso had originally intended to play for the 1984 U.S. Olympic team in Sarajevo, but chose to begin his professional career instead and left the team in September 1983 to sign with the Sabres. He made his debut for Team USA at the 1984 Canada Cup, at the age of 19. He also played in the 1983 World Junior Championships, the 1986 World Ice Hockey Championships and the 1987 Canada Cup.

Records

  • Second most NHL wins by a U.S.-born goaltender – 369
  • Most NHL assists by a goaltender – 48
  • Most NHL points by a goaltender – 48
  • Most consecutive NHL playoff wins – 14 (May 9, 1992 to April 22, 1993)
  • Tied for most consecutive wins in one NHL playoff season – 11 in 1992
  • Tied for most wins in one NHL playoff season – 16 (1992)

Playing career

Early career

Barrasso grew up in the town of Stow, Massachusetts, playing ice hockey on an outdoor rink. He started playing goaltender at the age of five years old and by the time he was a teenager, was playing in net for Acton-Boxborough with fellow NHL players Bob Sweeney and Jeff Norton, Barrasso was considered one of the most promising American goaltending prospects of all time. He was drafted by the Buffalo Sabres with the 5th overall pick in 1983. Skipping a college career, he went straight from high school to the NHL. At the time of his debut with the Sabres on October 5, 1983, less than six months after graduating from high school, Barrasso was the youngest goaltender to play and win a game in the NHL since Harry Lumley nearly forty years prior. He won the Calder Trophy and Vezina Trophy in his first season, becoming the third player to win both awards in the same year.

Pittsburgh Penguins

November 12, 1988, the Sabres traded Barrasso with a 3rd round draft pick in the 1990 draft (Joe Dziedzic) to the Pittsburgh Penguins for Doug Bodger and Darrin Shannon.

He won two Stanley Cups, in 1991 and 1992. It was his play in these Cup runs that established him as a "money goalie". In the following years, Barrasso almost entirely missed two seasons, the 1994–95 NHL season and the 1996–97 NHL season with injuries but came back with good performances in the next years. In 1997, he became the first American goaltender to record 300 NHL wins. A fiercely proud competitor, in his later seasons in Pittsburgh he developed a strained relationship with the local media, whom he felt were disrespectful of him and his family.