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Jason LaBarbera - The man in the net
http://www.e-sports.com/articles/2033/1/Jason-LaBarbera---The-man-in-the-net/Page1.html
Jo Ann Lawery
Jo Ann Lawery now lives in Las Vegas, Nevada. When she isn't writing for eSports and other web sites, this avid hockey and baseball fan works in, where else, a casino as a "slot club ambassador."
 
By Jo Ann Lawery
Published on 12/27/2007
 
His locker in the L.A. Kings dressing room is all by itself. But that doesn't bother Jason LaBarbera one bit. Afterall, he is the goaltender for the team.
LaBarbera is passionate the sport of hockey in Los Angeles.

When Jason LaBarbera, the L.A. Kings goal tender, is asked to describe his style of goaltending, one word would describe it - BIG.

Yes, big as in his size, six feet, three inches and 230 pounds.

"Everybody is scared of the goaltender, that's why my stall is all by itself," LaBarbera said after a recent Kings practice in Los Angeles.

On the ice, he looks even bigger.

While many kids in Canada wanted to be goal scorers, LaBarbera wanted to be a goaltender, just like his idol, Kurt Mclean, former goaltender of the Vancouver Canucks.

Ironically, the first NHL game he ever played in was as backup to none other than his idol when both of them played for the New York Rangers.

LaBarbera was just coming off a rib injury, which still affects him, but not in the way one would think.

"I'm still sore, but I don't feel it until I get off the ice and try to sleep," he said.

This is his fourth year in the league, his second with the Kings. He had been sent to their farm club in Manchester, New Hampshire. He was almost taken by another team when the Kings put him on waivers, but at no point did he ever give up. That wasn't an option.

"That thought never entered my mind," he said. "It's a part of life and you're going to have your ups and downs."

If he seems to shatter all those myths you heard about hockey goaltenders being, well, different, there's a reason for it. One can look at the two coaches who taught him everything he knows about goaltending and the game to understand.

They are goaltender coach Benoit Allaire of the New York Rangers(who is still there) and his junior hockey coach, Brent Peterson, who is now the assistant coach of the Nashville Predators.

He has high praise for the coach who coached him as a 16-year old with the Portland(Oregon) Winter Hawks.

"He really should be a head coach somewhere," he said. "I don't know why he isn't."

One might think that hockey fans in "Tinseltown" are very laid back and can't get passionate about a sport that is foreign to most of them. But, not to the native of Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, who has seen both the passion of hockey fans in New York and Los Angeles.

"L.A. Kings fan are just as rabid. The following for the Kings is unbelievable. They're just as passionate about the Kings as New York hockey fans are about the Rangers, " he said, sounding like someone who is an expert on the subject of passionate fans.

He is hoping that he can remain a part of a team that Kings' fans can be passionate about for a long time.