The K is Silent

The acquisition of goaltender Anton Khudobin is an interesting one for the P-Bruins. Instead of stats and analysis, though, we're lucky enough to have Heather Galindo from The Third Intermission, Aeros writer and long-time follower of Khudobin's career, to provide us with a little snapshot of what the Kazakh goalie is like. For more hard analysis of the trade, check out The Goalie Guild's feature on it, as well.

When I was looking for a picture to include with this post, I found this one from Khudobin's birthday couple of years ago. He had just played an absolutely electric playoff game and the crowd sang Happy Birthday to him as he accepted his first star honors.


Anton Khudobin. Photo by Fred Trask

We've posted a lot of player and game pictures over at The Third Intermission, but this is probably my all time favorite because Anton is just... Anton. It was a glorious moment to be in the building.

So if you're looking for stats and milestones and all that, check out theAHL.com. For me and most everyone who have had the pleasure (and chest pains) of watching him in nets, he's way more than a bunch of numbers.

Whatever anybody wants to say about him, there is no question he’s made an impact on fans everywhere he’s played, and I know he’ll make an impact on Providence fans, too. Anton, whom we nicknamed Dimples (though his mask says Dobby, but last time I looked, he‘s not a House Elf) for pretty obvious reasons, is from Kazakhstan, but spent his formative years in Russia.

If you’ve watched Nabokov much, you’ll find that Anton’s style is similar. Narrow stance, plenty of old school stuff (pad stacks and scrambles, ahoy!), but a solid technical repertoire to take care of the easy saves. He’s a small guy so he spends a lot of time challenging well outside of his crease. He’s pretty fearlesss and knows he has to do this to cut down the angle.

He’s charismatic. A little flourish on glove saves and he does this thing on dump-ins where he dives out and slows it down with his stick along the goal line rather than letting it bounce off the kick plate. It’s just one of many charming little Khudobinisms.

He’s also a funny guy and the beat writers there are going to love him. He says what’s on his mind, even if it doesn’t fit the hockey clichés. And frankly, his accent makes stuff that’s just marginally amusing into pretty hysterical. He’s got a great goldfish brain in that nothing really sticks to him. He’s happy-go-lucky, always smiling. He’s confident to the point of cocky sometimes, but when he’s YOUR goalie? That’s just a recipe for fun.

He will give you a hundred heart attacks a game, because he’s scrambling and diving and battling, but while it may look unorthodox, he finds a way to get ‘er done. Also…. He’s really really good in shootouts. Like… REALLY. And just fun to watch. Super patient, confident, and just does incredible things in shootouts thanks to his acrobatic athleticism.

If there’s a major knock against him, it’s that his focus is inconsistent. He’ll stand on his head and spin plates and sing show tunes one minute, and lets in a beach ball the next. But I attribute a lot of that lately to basically knowing there’s no place to move up in the Wild organization since they signed Dennis Endras to be Nik Backstrom’s backup in Minnesota next year.

What I’m saying is, Anton plays best when he’s hungry and I think a change of scenery will induce that hunger in him again. He’s got a whole new bunch of folks to impress and being in a barn like the Dunk, filled to the rafters as it was when I saw Binghamton play there in January, will put the wind in his sails again. And if that happens, there will be no stopping him.