At first glance, the goals allowed by the High School South’s ice hockey team in the season’s first three weeks would make it seem the Pirates didn’t have a very good goalie.
But take a look at the saves made, and it becomes apparent that South has an extremely good goalie.
Sophomore PJ Keenan was in a non-stop shooting gallery during the first part of December. Though he allowed 36 goals in an 0-6 start, he faced a whopping 272 shots. Keenan made 236 saves, giving him a save percentage of .868.
Were it not for the goalie, South would likely have had several contests ended by the mercy rule, in which the game is stopped if a team goes up by 10 after two periods.
As an example of Keenan’s ability to extend a game to the max, he allowed seven goals in the first two periods against Robbinsville on December 11 and could very easily have sulked and let the game get out of hand. But he made some dazzling saves (41 in all) to keep the game alive.
Keenan has had games of 60 saves against Princeton, 50 against Paul VI, and 44 against Passaic Valley.
“He’s been tremendous,” coach Laurent Lassance said. “He’s keeping us in the games and giving us a chance to be successful. We just need to find a way to finish.”
Keenan insisted he has no problem getting in the way of hard discs of rubber flying toward his body on numerous occasions.
“I like taking shots,” he said. “The more shots I have, the more I’m into the game, so it’s better for me. And I’m a sophomore, so I have time to improve.”
His efforts so far have been pretty impressive considering he started as an on-ice player during his in-house days. When he moved to travel hockey with the Pro-Skate Stars at age 12, the goalie got hurt and the coaches asked the tall, rangy Keenan if he would mind going into the nets.
“I was kind of big for my age, so they just threw me in,” he said. “Five years after, and here I am.”
It was a little more complicated than that. First off, Keenan was playing at a higher level of competition for the first time. Secondly, he was doing it at a position that was foreign to him.
Asked if his head was on a swivel in those early days, Keenan laughed and said “It was. I’d like to say I kept myself calm, but I didn’t. It took a little bit of time to settle into things. At first it was intimidating. I used to flinch at shots, but now I’m kind of used to it.”
Another problem he had was getting used to staying in his goal area.
“It was a little tough to adjust,” Keenan said. “I was always out of the net because I was used to skating. I kind of adapted to everything. They had Monday night clinics for goalies sometimes and I went to those and just kind of got into it.”
But as difficult as the physical adjustments were, the educational part of the game was what Keenan really had to adjust to. He had to learn to be a goalie.
“It was definitely about mobility and keeping my angles down,” he said. “I usually play deep in my crease, so I was giving a lot of net away that the shooters would come in and see. I had to focus on agility, coming out and cutting the angle down on shooters.”
Keenan, who now plays travel hockey with the Mercer Chiefs, played sparingly behind standout Patrick Tso as a freshman. He saved 29 of the 30 shots he faced and spent time learning under Tso.
“I watched him play, and he gave me some tips and so far it’s been helping me,” Keenan said. “He was a really good goalie. I looked up to him.”
With Tso gone, it has become Keenan’s show in goal, and Lassance has plenty of confidence in his sophomore.
“This is his year,” the coach said. “Obviously we don’t have the talent in front of him like we did last year, but he’s going to learn a lot from this year. The biggest thing with him is mentally he’s gotten tougher knowing he’s gonna get a lot of shots on him. He’s a big body, he covers a lot of net.”
Keenan admitted that his mindset wasn’t always the best, and that he would sometimes get down on himself when things went wrong.
“It’s a lot of mental stuff,” he said. “It’s tough sometimes. If a goal gets scored on me and I get into my head than it really affects my game and from there it goes down.”
That did not happen in the aforementioned game against Robbinsville, as Keenan hung in despite the early blitz.
“I tried to stay calm,” he said after the game. “Obviously it showed some difference than from me freaking out on the ice.”
When looking at West Windsor’s inflated goals-against total, Lassance felt it was more a product of too many mistakes in the defensive end and too many turnovers.
“JP is the main reason we’re keeping games going. He’s giving us chances to be successful,” the coach said. “He knows he’s our guy. The guys in front of him have to do the job they need to do, but he’s the guy we look to.
“It’s tough because we lack a whole lot of depth this year. He’s proving that if we had a little more depth, we would be where we were last year (finishing 14-9-2). So he’s doing what he needs to do, we just need to be better in front of him.”
Keenan doesn’t think in terms of goals allowed or how many saves he is making, he just tries to focus on making every save possible. While Lassance points to defensive breakdowns as part of the problem, the goalie takes some of the blame.
“I try to keep the game contained as much as possible,” he said. “Some games I don’t play as strong as I can, and I leave my team hanging. I have to learn to be more consistent.”
With the amount of shots he faces, Keenan is certainly given enough opportunities to work on that consistency.
