By KEVIN OKLOBZIJA
Over the course of a two-decade career in hockey, there will be milestones and grand achievements that will never be forgotten, spectacular performances and crushing defeats that will be impossible to erase from the memory banks.
But there also will be one juncture, one occasion, that defines the career. At least that’s what Mitch Korn believes, and he has never forgotten the moment of truth in Martin Biron‘s goaltending career.
Korn knows a thing or two about what makes a successful NHL career. One of the most respected goalie coaches in the game, Korn tutored Dominik Hasek during his two Hart Trophy seasons as NHL MVP with the Buffalo Sabres. He also helped elevate the games of Tomas Vokoun and Pekka Rinne with the Nashville Predators, and Braden Holtby with the Washington Capitals.
He also was a very big part of Biron’s development, first with the Rochester Americans and then with the Sabres.
So Korn will certainly feel a little pride on Friday night when Biron is inducted into the Amerks Hall of Fame in on-ice, pre-game ceremonies at Blue Cross Arena at the War Memorial.
“I strongly believe everybody’s career has a red-letter day, a day that everything changes,” Korn said. “It’s not always changing for the better, but you hope it is.”
For Biron, that day was March 1, 1998. A week earlier Amerks coach Brian McCutcheon and the organization had made the decision to send him to the South Carolina Stingrays of the East Coast Hockey League so he could play often and rediscover his game.
Talk about a wake-up call, especially for a first-round draft pick (16th overall by the Sabres in 1995).
But Biron hadn’t been playing like a top prospect in his rookie season with the Amerks, which is why journeyman veteran Mike Bales was getting the high-quality minutes.
“From my first year of junior (1994-95) to pro hockey, my career was in a downward regression, not a progression,” he said. “I still remember getting called into Brian’s office and him saying, ‘We’ve decided you’re going to go to the East Coast League.’
“Now, the East Coast League then wasn’t what it is today. You were going down three steps when you went to the Coast.”
But Biron understood. He boarded a plane for Charleston and by Saturday night had played two games for the Stingrays. Korn was in the arena for both, ready to critique, advise and counsel. Biron allowed just three goals but didn’t get a win either night (a loss and a tie).
“After the Saturday game, everybody’s holding a white Styrofoam thing of food and getting on the sleeper bus to go to Pensacola,” Korn remembers. “All of a sudden Rick Vaive (South Carolina’s coach and general manager) comes out and says, ‘We’ve got a problem.’ ”
Bales had been hurt that night during the Amerks game in Hershey. The Amerks needed Biron back in Rochester for Sunday’s game.
Korn needs to book flights.
“There was no team services guy, we didn’t have cell phones and there’s no internet to book flights,” Korn said. “I finally get us from South Carolina to somewhere to Washington, D.C., and then from Washington, D.C., to Rochester. We started the process at 6 a.m. and finally got in about 1.”
The game was at 5. Biron allowed one goal and the Amerks defeated the Kentucky Thoroughblades 2-1.
That was Biron’s red-letter day.
“I had the story from the Democrat and Chronicle matted and framed and I gave it to Marty,” Korn said. “I told him that was the day everything changes.
“He still has that framed story in the basement of his parents’ house.”
Korn was right, too. On Monday morning the Amerks boarded a bus for Toronto to catch a flight to Fredericton, New Brunswick. Biron started on Tuesday night and posted a 2-0 shutout. The guy in the other net: Vokoun.
Biron was on his way. He finished the 1997-98 season strong, and the next season, 1998-99, Biron was the AHL’s all-everything goalie. A first-team All-Star, the Baz Bastien Memorial Award winner. He went 36-13-3 with a 2.07 goals-against average and .930 save percentage as the Amerks reached the Calder Cup finals before falling to the Providence Bruins.
“He was rock solid, I don’t recall any real blip the whole season,” said Jon Christiano, the Amerks assistant coach in 1998-99. “When we had a video meeting — and we didn’t have big-screen TVs in the room back then — he was two feet from the TV.”
Biron became a full-time NHL goalie the next season, a gig that lasted 14 years (230-191-52, 2.61 GAA, .910 save percentage, 28 shutouts).
“We had a written plan,” Korn said. “This will happen, and then this will happen, and then you’ll be here and this will happen.
“Marty always thought it would happen quicker than I did. And he was right.”
That ECHL wake-up call might be why.
“Going to South Carolina was the lowest of times in my career,” Biron recalled, “and the very next year was probably my highest of times.”
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