Johnny Hicks' history-making night for Denver an exclamation point for smaller college goalies
LAS VEGAS, Nevada – Johnny Hicks was supposed to make a different kind of history.
At the start of the 2024-25 season, while playing for the Brooks Bandits of the BCHL, the goalie was one of the first commitments to Tennessee State University, which was planning on opening its Division I tenure this season.
But that never came to fruition. Tennessee State pushed its first season back to the 2026-27 season, and Hicks re-committed to Denver, likely as a backup goalie, last April.
A year later, Hicks is one of the biggest stories in college hockey and delivered a 49-save gem in double overtime to lift the Pioneers to a 4-3 victory in the national semifinal against top-ranked Michigan and a berth in Saturday's national championship game against Wisconsin.
It’s a wild turn of events for Hicks, who also improved to 15-0-1 this season after taking over as the Pioneers' starting goalie in January.
“It’s a wild story, isn’t it?” Denver defenceman Boston Buckberger said. “He’s been there for us, and he’s worked so hard; he wasn’t even the starter, and then he’s doing this. It’s been fun for us.”
Hicks’ showing against Michigan, especially if Denver wins on Saturday, will live in the Denver highlight reels for a long, long time. It’ll feature his pad save in overtime, flashing out the left leg on grade-A chance, it’ll feature the flashy glove stops, and it’ll feature him recovering from getting bowled over by Michigan’s Malcom Spence in the third period and then recovering after lying motionless and catching his breath.
And then for Hicks, his favourite memory on the highlight reel will be skating toward center ice to celebrate the game-winning goal by his captain, Kent Anderson, after 92 minutes and 35 seconds of action.
Hicks’ showing was also an exclamation point on a Frozen Four where short goalies have taken the throne.
Of the 146 goalies to play an NCAA game this season, only 22 were under 6-foot tall. Of those 22, only 10 played anywhere close to starter’s minutes and appeared in double-digit games.
Yet in the Frozen Four and when the national championship is handed out on Saturday here in Las Vegas, college hockey’s shortest goalies have successfully dominated the largest stage.
Earlier on Thursday, Daniel Hauser backstopped Wisconsin to a 2-1 win against North Dakota, stopping 21 shots, including a couple of key breakaways and a sprawling glove save through traffic with two minutes remaining to help the Badgers upset the Fighting Hawks.
Then the nightcap, a pair of sub-6-footers went head-to-head with Hicks duelling Michigan goalie, and Nashville Predators draft pick, Jack Ivankovic.
The juxtaposition felt even more extreme with the games being played in an NHL building, a league where only one goalie, Juuse Saros, doesn’t reach the 6-foot marker. At the highest levels of professional hockey, the position is reserved for giants; short kings need not apply.
And while that might be true for the NHL, this Frozen Four is a case study that height isn’t the most important factor at the collegiate level, especially in a new landscape where players with CHL experience are still eligible for the NCAA.
In addition to the three Frozen Four goalies, Brayden Gillepsie at Union and Mathis Rousseau at Maine also stepped into NCAA starter roles this season as sub-6-foot goalies after playing in the OHL and QMJHL, respectively.
How should we look at this?
“I think it’s a good example of how the new CHL-NCAA rules are going to create some opportunities for those smaller goalies that we just didn’t give as much before,” one NCAA assistant coach told EP via text. “They get the runway to play more in the CHL, to be a bit more battle-tested, and they become way more attractive to (NCAA teams) as an option.”
Let’s use Hauser as an example.
Hauser started playing some of the best of his career after a mid-season trade in the WHL from the Wenatchee Wild to the Calgary Hitman, posting a .926 save percentage and five shutouts in 25 games after the move. He parlayed that into an opportunity at Wisconsin, where he’s been a backbone of the Badgers' success during the NCAA tournament, allowing his teammates to take some more risk offensively.
“I think it gives us an unbelievable amount of confidence to make plays in the offensive zone,” Wisconsin captain Ben Dexheimer said. “We know if we make a mistake, which is going to happen, we have a guy back there that can bail us out multiple times a game, which he showed today.”
The Hauser story dovetails nicely with Hicks' path, a late-riser in the hockey world with a meteoric rise from winless in the BCHL during the 2021-22 season to the WHL late last season and now one win away from delivering a championship for Denver.