"ROZIE" DREAMS

Not everyone remembers the day they decided what they wanted to do with their life, but Jared Coreau definitely remembers his.

“I was at my first NHL game,” Coreau said. “It was Buffalo against Ottawa at the Corel Centre, and I was 5 years old at the time. We sat three rows behind the glass. I don’t remember watching the game, but I do remember staring at the goalies the whole time. It was Damian Rhodes for Ottawa and Dominik Hasek for Buffalo.

“I watched everything they did. I watched how they drank water, how they skated to the corners and back. I especially watched Hasek because he had a few quirky things that he did. I watched them the whole time.

“The next morning I woke up and told my parents that I wanted to be a goalie. I think they looked at each other like, ‘Oh boy, this is going to cost us some serious money,’ but that’s how it started.”

Jeff and Sharon Coreau acquiesced to their son’s wishes, buying him a helmet and used goalie pads. Eventually they bought his first set of custom goalie pads – a set of blue and white Bauer pads in the style of Curtis Joseph, Jared’s favorite goaltender at the time. “I can remember pulling them out of the box,” he said. “I actually slept the whole night in my gear because I refused to take it off, that’s how much I loved it.”

He attended week-long summer camps in southern Ontario where he grew up, but when he was 11, he started working with Andrew Mercer, a full-time goalie coach (Coreau still works with him), so that he could learn the fundamentals and refine his technique.

It was roughly around the same time that a teacher in his hometown of Perth gave him some valuable advice.

“I was in sixth grade and Mr. Pegg talked to us about the importance of education, how you can learn a skill that will earn you money and take care of you for the rest of your life,” Coreau recalled. “He said, ‘Imagine if you could play a sport and then go to school for free.’ I really paid attention when he added that some colleges charge $40,000 a year for tuition. If sports can get you into school for free, that’s the best thing.”

His dream became to earn a scholarship to play Division I college hockey. It wouldn’t come easily. “There was one year where I was cut by seven different teams,” he said.

He played Junior A hockey for the Peterborough Stars in the Ontario Junior Hockey League during the 2008-09 season, then played a full season for the Lincoln Stars in the United States Hockey League the following year. It was while he was playing for Lincoln that he was offered a full ride to Northern Michigan University.

“It was a dream come true,” he said. “I liked that I was going to a school where I wasn’t going to be able to hide behind an extremely strong team. I wanted some work. Northern had a decent program and I felt like I could be a vital component in their success.”

Coreau played three seasons under Wildcats head coach Walt Kyle. He enjoyed living in Marquette (although he liked the summers there more than the winters), found the people “very neighborly” and appreciated that most of the teachers were hockey fans.

Nicknamed “Rozie” (a play off the second syllable of his surname), he steadily improved his play and became the No. 1 man in net during his sophomore season. He excelled in the classroom as well as on the ice. Majoring in accounting/corporate finance, he had a 3.7 GPA.

Coreau was an undrafted prospect, which meant he was free to sign with any NHL team.

“I knew I was going to go pro and my agent (Jerry Buckley) and I talked quite a bit through the process,” he said. “Everybody told me that when the money calls, you can’t say no because you never know what can happen. You could have a bad year or get hurt.”

Coreau signed a three-year contract with the Red Wings after his junior year.

“I had no idea Detroit had tabs on me,” he said. “Actually, I thought it was going to be Winnipeg. Their scout, Brian Renfrew, was at practices, games and morning skates. He traveled a lot to see me, so when it came down to picking Detroit, I almost felt bad.”

Those feelings were eclipsed, however, by his excitement regarding the opportunity to become a prospect in the Red Wings organization.

“I knew I wasn’t going to go straight to the NHL,” he said. “I definitely knew I had work to do. I still have work to do. That’s just the way it is. The development process for a goalie is a lot lengthier. It’s a position that takes time. It takes time to become consistent and make all those saves.”

If you want evidence of the development process, you need look no further than Coreau’s rookie season last year. He appeared in 25 games between Toledo and Grand Rapids and had one victory to show for his efforts. His cumulative record was 1-16-6.

“I thought it was going to be a great year,” Coreau said. “I had a great prospects tournament. I played the third period in three exhibition games and allowed only one goal. My first game in the AHL, we lost in overtime in Toronto, but I thought I played OK. My first game in the ECHL, we also lost in overtime, but I thought I played great. And then something happened.

“I’ve thought about it and I can’t come up with a concrete answer. It might have been a bit mental, a bit physical, but whatever it was, I wasn’t winning.”

It was equivalent to Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown. He felt terrible. There were times when he wanted to hide. But he never quit.

“I was getting down, but I was showing up every day and doing my best to be a good teammate. I kept working and working and, while the results didn’t show it, I began to feel more confident. During the last two months of the season, I started having a lot better games.”

Recognizing it had been the year from hell, Coreau did the only thing he could. He chose to put last season behind him.

“At the end of the year, I figured I could sulk, I could dwell on it and I could let it affect my future or, like (Griffins head coach) Jeff Blashill suggested, I could take what I learned in games and practices and come back a better goalie, and that’s what I did.”

Coreau chose to see his rookie season as a building block rather than a stumbling block in his career.

“Dusty Collins, who played at Northern before me and played in the AHL, told me that the pros are all about moving forward. No one cares about the previous year and how good or bad it was. If you scored 50 goals last season and you’re only on pace for 20 this year, people will say, “Stop talking about last year and start doing it this year.’ Whether I was in the ECHL or the AHL, I knew guys didn’t have confidence in me. I needed to change that.”

Anxious to put last season behind him, Coreau went 4-2 with Toledo before rejoining the Griffins at the end of November when the Red Wings recalled Petr Mrazek to replace the injured Jonas Gustavsson.

In his first start with the Griffins this season, Coreau stopped 35 of 36 shots in a 6-1 win in Adirondack on Nov. 29. A week later, he stopped all 31 shots in a 4-0 shutout in Rockford, then excelled in a 2-1 shootout win the next night in Milwaukee. He won his next three starts, too, running his record to 6-0 and tying a Griffins record for longest winning streak to start a season.

What a difference a year can make.

Although Coreau didn’t post another win in the month that followed, he didn’t play poorly either. He allowed three or fewer goals in five of his next seven starts, and when Tom McCollum joined Mrazek in Detroit on Jan. 11, Coreau became the de facto No. 1 goaltender.

“I’m treating it as a big challenge,” he said. “It’s definitely a big opportunity for me and I have to put in the work and have some good starts.”

Coreau knows he has plenty of areas that need improvement. Rebound control is one concern. He would also like to be able to play the puck better.

“The biggest thing is just making the saves I need to make,” he said. “I know it sounds a bit simple, but I once heard a goalie coach say, ‘I don’t care if you’re the most technically sound goalie or flopping around like a whale, if you stop the puck, you’re going to go places – that’s it.”

At 6-foot-5, Coreau has the size that allows him to reach pucks that might elude smaller men. Conversely, there’s the saying, “big goalies, big holes.” So there are pros and cons. Coreau does his best to listen to Blashill, a former goaltender himself.

“It’s very advantageous because he’s talked to a lot of goalies, from college to pros. He’s compiled these drills we do everyday. They’re simple drills, but they’re important drills. It’s about keeping your feet set, using your stick to control rebounds, making a blocker save without punching at it. It’s all about keeping things tight and in control.”

Being in control is certainly now within Coreau’s reach.

“In talking with people like Ken Holland and Mike Babcock, they like to see guys go through adversity,” he said. “Andrej Nestrasil spent almost two seasons in Toledo and now he’s in the NHL with Carolina after playing with the Wings. Look at Luke Glendening. He was a walk-on at Michigan, played in Toledo, then came here and now he’s in Detroit. These guys are big role models to me. Perseverance is a huge part of my personality.

“I want people to say I faced adversity and worked through it. Last year, I didn’t say much. I just stayed out of everyone’s way. But I worked on everything – I continue to work on things – and this year I feel 100 times better.”