I know our prime minister. Not personally—but as a fellow goaltender.
Netminders share traits. We have common reasons for choosing the position. We express our peculiarities across aspects of our lives. And our operating systems are, to be kind, different.
Of course, this doesn’t mean I am prime ministerial material. And there are contrasts between an aging beer-leaguer and a youthful third-string Harvard goalie. But what I do at the rink and elsewhere, and what Mark Carney has done at the rink and elsewhere, abide certain characteristics. You can understand us better—how we socialize, how we manage, how we think—from our attraction to the position, what we have derived from it and how we have applied the unmistakable idiosyncrasies.
The most obvious traits involve demeanour. To have any success, the position requires composure under siege. Just because some big guy is blocking your view (anyone familiar come to mind?) doesn’t mean it’s time to panic. Skills are developed through a disciplined stream of endless drills and a reliance on fundamentals over flair. The position requires a mental reset after mistakes to reframe without loss of confidence—or else. And while Carney has lately implored an “elbows up” approach, in truth most successful goalies are the eyes in the storm—we look ridiculous when we fight.
The position also breeds perspective. Goalies, unlike skaters, see the whole ice surface and the play as it develops. Through their vantage point and the repetition in how the teams play, they come to understand patterns—if they don’t, it’s pretty well game over. A good goalie anticipates and moves early but doesn’t terribly much guess, a definite thread in Carney’s banking and political career.
There are many seeming leadership contradictions in the eccentric mix. On the one hand, the position occupies an eerie solitude, a loner mentality, with play far away much of the time over which there is (often maddeningly) no control. On the other hand, the role requires utter focus and decisiveness when it’s time to be involved. Solo in leadership, composed yet exposed.
There is a strange preoccupation with control and a resistance to relinquish the narrative of the game, even though it depends on others’ performances. Finding that balance creates a tension between ego and humility. As the last line of defence—the one blamed for the soft goal, credited for the big save, as either the scapegoat or the hero—there remains the clear need for an inherent trust in the team around you. Many goalies I know can’t overcome the fear that someone is about to let them down, that it will be someone else’s fault for failure, and it eats them alive. I can only hope, for the country’s sake, that Carney can be a grown-up about his cabinet.
