Sitting Around and Naming Old Players: Goaltender Edition

A common meme you’ll find out in the wild is that “Dudes can literally just sit around, name old sports players, and have the best time.” Honestly, this applies to all fans, regardless of gender. Find me a sports fan who doesn’t love reminiscing, and I’ll show you a liar. So, let's sit around and name old players.

This year the PWHL helped bring more eyes to women’s hockey than ever before. I've been watching women’s hockey since 2002—well, it would have been 1998, but my parents were all like, "No, you can’t stay up in the middle of the night watching the Nagano Olympics..." These players have been waiting a long time for this moment—and so have I. If you too have been through the trials and tribulations of the OG NWHL, CWHL, and PHF, this is going to spark some memories. If you’re one of the new fans, you'll meet some cult heroes from back in ye olden times, when we were lucky to get any games streamed.

There are so many stories to tell that the best way to do this is in three editions: goalies, blueliners, and forwards. Goalies are obviously the best, so we’re going to start with them. This is all my opinion, and there will be an obvious skew towards North American goalies here because the CWHL/early PHF didn’t see a lot of European goalies. If you’re wondering where Nana Fujimoto is on this list, for example, my response is that she last played in the 2022 Olympics—not exactly a long time ago compared to the rest of the goalies here.

Sonja van der Bliek

Oh yeah, we’re doing a deep cut right off the bat. Some of you may remember Sonja van der Bliek, though it’d be unsurprising if you didn’t, considering she spent her NCAA years at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, whose hockey program hasn’t been the most successful, and only three seasons in the pros as the starting goaltender. The rest of her time was as the backup. Unfortunately for Sonja van der Bliek, she was generally around too early for her teams to be good. With the Brampton Thunder it started out well, with her first season in 2011/12 on a Brampton team that finished with a 18-7-2 record led by Gillian Apps, Jayna Hefford, and Cherie Piper. She was in the backup role behind Liz Knox and won all three games that she was given.

It was arguably all downhill from there as van der Bliek wouldn’t see game time in the 2012/13 season. When she came back for the 13/14 season, Brampton was left without its Olympians, leaving Brampton in a rough spot. The leading scorer Danielle Skirrow had 15 points in 24 games and van der Bliek finished with a 4-11-2 record to go with her -0.479 GSAA/30. To put it in perspective, Brampton goalies Jamie Miller finished with a -1.218 GSAA/30 and Erika Vanderveer had a -1.931 GSAA/30.

After one more season in Brampton, van der Bliek was off to the Toronto Furies, where she had a very good run as the backup behind Christina Kessler. When Kessler retired in 2017, van der Bliek was back in the starting role during an Olympic year where the Furies saw themselves without Natalie Spooner and Renata Fast. This went poorly for Toronto, who finished with a 9-17-2 record, but Sonja van der Bliek ended up with a good 0.625 QS%. She would spend one more year in hockey as she moved to Sweden to play with a struggling Brynäs IF team, finishing with a 9-9-1 record and 0.579 QS%.