Longtime North Vancouver hockey coach Billy Coupland and his good friend Harvey Jones will hold their annual hockey pool this week and there’s one name that probably will be called pretty early in the proceedings: Martin Jones.
Sure Martin is Harvey’s son, and Billy coached Martin for five years at the North Shore Winter Club, but this is no pity pick. Harvey and Billy know what many others around the NHL are saying: the 25-year-old goaltender is poised to be one of the potential breakout stars of the 2015-16 season.
That may seem like an odd statement considering that Jones has only played in 34 regular season NHL games and a total of 56 minutes in the playoffs since his league debut with the Los Angeles Kings on Dec. 13, 2013. Those low totals are a result of his position on the depth chart as the backup behind Jonathan Quick, one of the best goalies in the world.
That all changed during a wild few days this summer when Jones was traded to the Boston Bruins on June 26 in a deal that involved Milan Lucic. Four days later Jones was shipped back to the West Coast in a trade to San Jose that netted the Bruins a prospect as well as a first-round pick in the 2016 NHL draft. The Sharks then locked up Jones as their starting goalie, signing him to a three-year contract worth $9 million.
“Martin was at the top of our list of players that we had targeted,” Sharks GM Doug Wilson told reporters the day San Jose completed the trade with Boston. “We’re extremely excited to have him on board.”
Now all Jones has left to do is prove that he’s up to the task of being a No. 1 goaltender in the NHL. Considering his track record of continually being underestimated and continually blowing away all expectations, that’s exactly what he’s about to do.
San Jose’s Martin Jones era started on Tuesday when the Sharks travelled to Vancouver to take on the Canucks in preseason action. He put up a shutout, turning away all 30 shots he faced in a 4-0 win.
“We needed him,” San Jose head coach Peter DeBoer told reporters after the game. “The game was closer than the score. He was the best player for us tonight.”
The performance came as no surprise to Coupland who first coached Jones when the goalie was nine years old. Through five seasons at the Winter Club the coach and goalie moved up together from atom to peewee to bantam on a loaded Winterhawks team that was almost unbeatable. The team went 98-2 through five regular seasons in the Pacific Coast Amateur Hockey Association and won the league title each year. In 2003 they won the provincial title and the unofficial “world championship,” the Quebec International Peewee Hockey Tournament. Two years later they won the bantam provincial title with Jones playing a starring role.
“He was magical in the provincial championships,” says Coupland about their run in 2005. “He played in six games and let in one goal against the best hockey players in the province. That’s pretty remarkable.”
That team went on to win the Western Canadian Bantam Championships. The only blemish on the team’s stellar record came in 2004 when they lost in the provincial final. That also happened to be the season that Jones fell while snowboarding and broke both his arms. He returned for the playoffs but wasn’t at full strength.
The most startling stat about those Winterhawks teams is likely this one: in those five years with Jones as the No. 1 goalie, the team did not lose a single game on their home ice.
“That’s a pretty incredible accomplishment and it speaks volumes about him and obviously the rest of the group that he played with,” says Coupland. “He was a hell of a goaltender and he was a winner.”
That success, however, didn’t translate into huge interest from Western Hockey League teams. Jones was selected in the fourth round of the bantam draft by the Calgary Hitmen and was buried behind starter Daniel Spence as a backup.
Coupland has a few theories about why Jones, who had done nothing but win games for half a decade, was overlooked. One was that, as a general rule, goaltenders are not picked high in most drafts. Two was that scouts assumed that Jones was successful mainly because he had a powerhouse team in front of him that included future NHLers Kyle Turris, Drayson Bowman, Stefan Elliott and John Negrin.
The biggest reason, though, was a small thing: Martin Jones. When he played on the Winterhawks Jones topped out at about five-foot-eight.
“There were other goaltenders out there his age who were six feet tall, six-foot-one,” recalls Coupland. “There was one goaltender in particular, a boy named Ian Curtis from Swift Current, that Martin did nothing but beat over the course of his minor hockey career but everybody always talked about how great Ian Curtis was. Ian was six-foot-one, maybe six-foot-two, and looked like a goaltender. Martin was five-foot-eight, and didn’t.”
Then the NHL draft came and went without a single team calling out the name Martin Jones. At the time he was still the backup in Calgary, which played a huge part in limiting his exposure. But something else was happening as well: he was growing. And growing and growing. By the time he was done growing the quick little goalie who did nothing but win with the Winterhawks was now nearly six-foot-four.
“When you’re a smaller goalie you need to be very technically sound to be successful,” says Coupland. “And so he had that technique which allowed him to be successful when he was small, and then once he got the advantage of his size, the sky was the limit.”
Jones may have been undrafted, but he wasn’t unnoticed. Following the NHL draft a little serendipity earned him an invitation to training camp with the L.A. Kings as a free agent. In his final season at the Winterclub, Jones was backed up by a goalie named Dylan Crawford. A few years later when Martin was floating as a free agent, the Kings happened to be coached by a man named Marc Crawford, Dylan’s father.
“Marc, I’m sure, had something to do with the fact that L.A. invited him to camp as a free agent,” says Coupland. There were no guarantees for the 18-year-old attending his first NHL training camp, but Jones somehow managed to walk away with a pro contract.
“That is rare, to say the least,” says Coupland. “When you go to an NHL camp and you’re a free agent, to come out of that camp with an NHL contract – that’s like winning the lottery. That just doesn’t happen.”
Jones then went back to Calgary, where he was finally the No. 1, and proceeded to tear up the WHL. In 2009-10 he won the WHL goalie of the year award and he was named to Canada’s team for the 2010 World Junior Championships held in Saskatchewan. The script at the tournament followed a similar pattern as Jones was the backup to Jake Allen. In the gold medal final, however, Canada fell behind the United States 5-3 in the third period and Jones replaced Allen. He then made several huge saves as Canada stormed back to send it into overtime. The golden moment ended, however, when John Carlson scored to give U.S.A. the win.
When his junior career came to an end Jones, stuck behind strong goalies in L.A., spent a few years starring with the American Hockey League’s Manchester Monarchs. He finally got his NHL shot when Quick got hurt in 2013 and his debut, even considering his penchant for exceeding expectations, blew everyone away.
Jones tied an NHL record by winning his first eight games, including three shutouts. Amazingly that showing didn’t earn him a permanent spot on the team – when he was sent back to the minors he was leading the league in goals against-average (1.41) and save percentage (.950) and was tied for second in the league in shutouts.
“He demonstrated what he was capable of doing,” says Coupland. “Obviously people around the National Hockey League took notice.”
A trade opened up a spot for Jones later in the season and he served as Quick’s backup during the playoffs, earning himself a permanent spot engraved on the most famous trophy in the world when the Kings won the Stanley Cup. Last year Jones played the whole year in the NHL but still saw only sporadic duty as Quick’s backup.
Now he’s the man in San Jose, and Coupland predicts this story will follow the familiar pattern once again.
“When he’s given an opportunity, he excels,” the coach says. “I see no reason why he isn’t going to continue to excel because quite frankly at every stage he’s done just that. There’s never been anything that’s ever been handed to him. In every situation it’s always been something that he’s had to work for. It’s one of those unique stories and a really cool story. He’s a good example for young goaltenders in particular but also young hockey players in general. Just because you’re not ‘the guy,’ it doesn’t mean that it’s not going to work out for you if you continue to work hard and have the right attitude. He obviously has an inner calm that allows him to believe in his abilities. He’s always had that.”
That demeanour, in fact, is Jones’ biggest attribute, says Coupland.
“I think the best thing that Martin has is his mindset and mentality. As a goaltender you want to have the same mindset that a baseball pitcher has – you want to have a bad memory. If you give up a homerun or if you give up a bad goal, you’re able to get over it. Martin has that. He’s got a perfect demeanour for a goaltender.”
That demeanour comes across in interviews where Martin is always quick to downplay his own impressive results and give praise to the team in front of him. That personality, says Coupland, comes right from Martin’s mother Sofia and father Harvey who, when he’s not facing off against Coupland in hockey pools, is working as the vice president and general manager of arena operations for the Vancouver Canucks.
“They’re just great people, and there’s a reason why Martin is the way he is,” says Coupland. “Martin was never somebody who sought the limelight or was Bobby Bigwheel. He was always very humble. His father Harvey is one of the greatest people you’ll ever meet. He’s salt of the earth and a quality human being.”
Coupland says there’s only one place where Martin’s cool demeanour breaks down: the golf course when he loses a round to his old coach. “That’s actually about the only place you’ll ever see Martin lose his cool because he’s losing at golf to a middle-aged man,” he says with a laugh. “He’s a special kid. There’s only 30 starting goaltender jobs in the National Hockey League so you have to be pretty special to have one of those jobs. It’s pretty select company.”
