VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Many hockey players have to go far from home to begin their careers; not Dylan Garand.
The Canadian netminder started with the Juan de Fuca Grizzlies in the Westshore area of Victoria, B.C. — his hometown. After playing a couple of seasons a bit northeast for the Delta Hockey Academy in the Canadian Sports School Hockey League (CSSHL), Garand was drafted 58th overall by the Kamloops Blazers in the Western Hockey League, a team just an hourlong flight away.
It was his time in the WHL that put him on the NHL radar.
An 89-31-7 record with a .918 save percentage and 12 shutouts certainly will grab attention, but his 11-7-1 record, 2.08 goals-against average and .927 save percentage over two playoff runs certainly caused conversation.
The journey to the NHL came full circle for Garand on Friday night as he took his spot between the pipes for a matchup with his hometown Canucks.
“The more you’re around him, you just gain an appreciation for how competitive he is,” head coach Mike Sullivan said of Garand. “His passion to play the game. He loves hockey. He loves playing goal. He loves stopping pucks. He’s a real competitive guy. He’s an enthusiastic learner, which we love. He just loves being on the ice. He immerses himself in the learning environment. I have a lot of conversations with Jeff Malcolm, our goalie coach, and he always expresses to me how much of a joy it is to coach a guy like him because he’s so enthusiastic with the way he approaches the game.
“He’s a high-character kid. He’s an easy guy to root for just because of his attitude and his positive approach to the energy that he brings to the rink every day.”
Among the 12 goalies who had made at least 14 starts entering Friday’s slate of games, Garand’s 2.5 expected goals-against per 60 was the lowest, according to HockeyStats.com.
His .905 save percentage ranked fourth in that group, which includes big names such as the Wild’s Jesper Wallstedt, the Bruins’ Jeremy Swayman and the Lightning’s Andrei Vasilevskiy. Even his 0.8 goals saved above expected ranked sixth, while the 4.7 goals saved above average he’s posted indicates he’s stopped more pucks than the league-average netminder.
All in all, Garand has also given up the second-fewest goals among the goaltenders with heavy workloads to start the 2026-27 season (31).
“I just think it goes back to his character,” Sullivan said of how Garand handled the increased workload. “He embraced the challenge. We talked through that process with him. When you look at the starts that he gave us through the course of that stretch, the majority of them he played extremely well for us, making timely saves, giving us a chance to win.
“And that’s what we’re asking of our guys. We gave him a heavy workload there, what we felt was out of necessity. Understanding that it doesn’t always set the players up in that circumstance, but we felt that under the circumstance that we were in, that it gave us the best chance to win.
“I think when you look at our situation now with [Joonas Korpisalo] coming back, we feel like we have two really capable guys that maybe we have the ability to share the workload a little bit. Our hope is we get the best version of both of them.”
