Ian Perrier is a well-travelled former pro goalie whose career has taken him from multiple locations in North America all the way to the rinks in Sweden.

Perrier, 30, didn’t follow a conventional route to becoming a pro goalie.

“I left home when I was about 15, and wound up playing in Ft. St. John that year … prior to ending up in Fort St. John, I’d tried out for the Williams Lake Timber Wolves in the B.C. Junior Hockey League. That is Carey Price’s home town, and I got the opportunity to meet his dad, Jerry Price. And the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me about my hockey playing was ‘You remind me a lot of Carey.’ I’ve hung onto that ever since. I played one game with them and lost my job to a defenceman.”

Carey Price, for those who don’t know, is the Montreal’s Canadiens all-world goaltender who backstopped the Canadiens to the Stanley Cup finals this past summer. Being compared to Price had an influence on young Perrier’s career.

“For sure. I barely knew who he was … I think he would have been 20 years old when I was 15, and he was starting to get a ton of recognition. Then all of a sudden (I) was paying a whole lot of attention to Price and who he was and what he was all about. I actually wound up bumping into him a few years later when I was down in Calgary ‘cause he was training with World Pro Goaltending and doing off-ice training at the same facility I was. Didn’t have a chance to talk to him … the guy was a star at that point … I just wanted to be where he was. But it was pretty interesting to see some kid from Whitehorse, Yukon here in the same coaching facilities as the world’s current best goalie.”

Perrier played Junior B with the Chase Chiefs in B.C. in their inaugural season. He attended eight different high schools in grades 11 and 12, which, as Perrier says, is tough for a kid that age. He played in Melville, Saskatchewan, and was the youngest goalie in the league at the time.

“They wound up letting me go, because they felt I was too young … I found myself in Claresholm, Alberta, playing in the Heritage Junior Hockey League, which was, hands down, the worst hockey I’ve ever played in my life. But I chose to stick it out there and try my best, and, ultimately, someone in Calgary gave me a phone call one day, asking me ‘do you want to play Junior A?’ It was like ‘absolutely!’ So I wound up practicing a few games, and the next thing I know, they were throwing me into a regular season game, and in my first three games, I got first star three times in a row. So that was pretty great.”

Perrier played for the Calgary Royals. Unfortunately his season was cut short. He missed five games at the end of the year due to a concussion, but was re-signed the following year.

“There was some turmoil in the second year. The coach was quite young and I would say inexperienced, and wasn’t able to manage his goalies very well – myself, or my goalie partner. So I wound up getting released from them, and my season got cut short again, but it was best for me in the long run.”

The following year, Perrier played with the Ice Dogs in Dryden, Ontario.

“Dryden was a great experience … I was a starter there. We ended up making it to the league finals and lost to the Wisconsin Wilderness.”

After a year in Dryden, Perrier got a scholarship to Northland College, in Ashland, Wisconsin.

“There I met a guy named Garrett Nystedt, and he and I previously played against each other the year before. He lasted – I think – one semester before he dropped out of school. It just wasn’t for him. He wound up playing in … the Central Hockey league, bounced around a little bit, in North American pro, and found himself in … the Czech Republic.”

Perrier enjoyed his first year at Northland.

“I had a great year there. Like, I set a whole bunch of records for goaltending, I was a freshman starter, it was great. But the education just wasn’t for me, so I transferred over to Westfield State University in Massachusetts, and then, by complete luck, I wound up getting the starting job there as well.

“Unfortunately, my goalie partner got suspended … before the season even started, for doing something dumb on campus involving security guards and him in his underwear. So I wound up getting thrust into the starting position, and had a lot of success there as well. I set records for save percentage, goals against average, and games played in a season.”

“Then the following year, my same goalie partner came back with a vengeance, and he took the job from me, which was pretty humbling. I actually learned a lot from his attitude that year. And in my final year of school, I got the starting job back, and we did fairly well, nothing to write home about, but made it to the second round of the playoffs, and so now my college career is over, all of a sudden.

“But I get a phone call from my old pal Garrett Nystedt, who I met my first year of college, and he said “hey, man, we need a goalie over here. Can I introduce you to our GM?’ And I said ‘absolutely!’ And I think within 24 hours of talking to the GM, they offered me a contract. And there was really no time between the end of my college career to me signing a pro contract … maybe 10 days.”

It might be an understatement to say Perrier got off to a rocky start in Sweden with Åmåls SK., a Division 2 team.

“My first game in Sweden, it was just an exhibition game, and I had been training all summer long, getting myself ready for it, and we lost 9-2. And I was in net for the whole thing. So that was a pretty rude awakening.”

After that first game debacle, Perrier made a key adjustment to his game.

“After that first game, I really took the time to think back on it … what was I doing that got me into that situation? So after that first game I completely adjusted how I was playing, especially moving around the crease. Within no time I turned things around, and saw a ton of success over there,” related Perrier.

“I stayed on my feet a whole lot more. I was really waiting for the puck to come to me instead of me trying to go to the puck. It just made me a lot more mobile around the ice … by staying on my feet longer, I was able to force the players to do what I wanted,” explained Perrier.

“With me getting back into coaching, that’s one thing I’m going to install in the students very early and very often. The longer you can stay on your feet while you’re moving around the crease, the better.”

What was it like playing in Sweden?

“I have some mixed emotions about it,” says Perrier. “I loved the fact that I was able to go over to Sweden to continue playing hockey, but you could kind of tell that the sun was setting on my career. The two years that I was over there, I was awarded team MVP, which was very flattering, but there was really no way to promote myself to get to the next level, largely because at 25 and 26, I was getting ‘old’. And that’s just the stark reality of sports and athletics. Unless you’re already in the system, it’s pretty hard to maintain your career into your late 20’s and 30’s.

“So I’m very fortunate that I was able to do that, but one of the biggest downsides of my hockey career was the number of diagnosed and undiagnosed concussions that I got.

“In the moment you don’t realize the kind of impact it’s going to have on you, but as time went on, I was able to feel those a little more. When I left Sweden, I was just playing recreational hockey here in Whitehorse, and I actually got a concussion in March of 2019, and I haven’t been on the ice since.”

“It was the Native tournament in the first game, my own guy cut across the crease and kneed me in the head. That was a bad one.”

Perrier has suffered seven diagnosed concussions and he’s not sure how many have gone undiagnosed, because, as he says, “they do compound as well. You might not realize the damage at the time.

“I’d like to compare … being a goalie to being a boxer. I don’t know what kind of damage happens when a puck hits you in the face at 100 miles an hour, even with your helmet on. It’s probably not good. They can sometimes jar you pretty good.

“But all that being said, I took a few years out of it, I focused on my mental health and my career, and just getting myself into a place where I feel comfortable. I’m actually going to be getting back into it this year, coming back after two years. I’m just going to be playing rec league in the A division as a goalie. It certainly beats sitting around doing nothing for another Whitehorse winter.”

Perrier was the first goalie from the Yukon to play as a pro.

“I was the first goalie to sign a professional contract to play hockey. And I’m hoping I’m not the last.”

“I’m not really sure how to put it into words, ‘cause when somebody turns around and says ‘oh, you’re making history’ – in my mind I was just doing what I knew how to do.”

“I’m a few years removed from my time in Europe, even college and junior, but I’ve looked back on my hockey experience and my career and … those are the best years of my life. I would absolutely not trade anything for those experiences.”

Perrier hasn’t taught in goalie camps since 2018.

“I kind of got pushed out of it by the Minor Hockey Association,” he relates.

“When I came back to town, to start doing these clinics, I just wanted to assume my previous role as the head coach on the ice. I have the credentials, I have the experience, so it made sense, and everybody was really receptive to that.

“I was on the board of directors for Yukon Hockey, as the director of goalie development. Unfortunately, Whitehorse Minor (Hockey) and Yukon Hockey are two separate boards that don’t necessarily communicate or get along very well, so I believe it was Whitehorse Minor (Hockey) made some decisions that I didn’t really like, because there are a lot of parents involved with their kids on the ice. They were kind of negating what I was trying to teach the kids, and it got to the point where I wasn’t able to have as much control over the clinics as I wanted to, and therefore I wasn’t able to do as good a job as I could have been doing. So I elected to step away from them, and it was kind of purposeful, because very soon people were asking ‘where is Ian? How come Ian isn’t out here? We want Ian back out here.’

“So a lot of me getting back into playing this year is to get me back in that environment, and back in the mood to start helping kids. I kind of need to refresh my own love for the game before I start helping other people out.”

Perrier is toying with the idea of reviving his goalie coaching career in the near future.

“I was actually thinking of starting with a Christmas clinic. Those were generally pretty popular when I was growing up, and any kids that are playing Outside are back for the holidays. There’s quite a few young kids playing college hockey as well. I know of one young girl … she’s playing at Brock University, so I’m going to put the bug in her dad’s ear to come out to the clinics and stay sharp over the Christmas holidays, and to burn off the vast amount of turkey she consumes.

“It’ll give me some time to get back on the ice and kind of refresh my memory of how it should all look and feel and see if we can make something of it. And one of the most important things for me in these clinics is that it’s not a cash grab for me. I don’t want there to be excessive registration fees. Ideally, it would just be ice time done through Minor Hockey, but I would have to have full control over how it’s structured, and who was out there helping me teach these kids.

“I think the AGM for Minor Hockey is happening pretty soon, so I might just walk in there.”

Perrier closes with a message regarding mental health in the Yukon.

“There needs to be more support in the mental health … industry, or access to mental health services in Whitehorse, because I unfortunately had three concussions within the course of three years, and there was no support … there definitely needs to be something done about that.”