He's a tall goalie; a presence in the net that shrinks the options for shooters. Some nights he's unbeatable. Other nights he stops the shots his team needs him to stop. But most of all, his stellar play as a rookie reinvigorated a season that was slipping down the standings. What once was talk of next season became talk of the postseason.
That was Sean Burke in 1988 for the New Jersey Devils, dragging a team that didn't seem predestined for the playoffs into the final seed with a remarkable 10-1 record in 13 games. His debut between the pipes changed the dynamic for his team. His confidence permeated through the lineup. His play gave them a chance to believe.
James Reimer was born during that Devils' playoff push. Now, he's doing much the same thing for the Toronto Maple Leafs ... although not in the truncated schedule Burke did it in and standing two inches shorter.
The 6-2 Reimer is 10-4-2 with a 2.24 GAA and a stellar .931 save percentage, which would place him second in the NHL behind Tim Thomas had he played the 20 games minimum for leaderboard eligibility. (Tonight's game against the Pittsburgh Penguins is expected to be his 18th appearance.)
The term "rookie sensation" is tossed around as commonly as any hockey label, but Reimer fits the suit. The Leafs are six points out of the No. 8 seed beginning play tonight, thanks in large part to the man they call Optimus Reim.
"Optimus" being derivative of "Optimist," it's a fitting moniker. There's sanguinity around the Leafs that no one thought could appear this late in the season back when Toronto was hapless and the Boston Bruins thought they had a top 3 pick in next summer's draft.
But through that adversity, and the shedding of big-name players like Tomas Kaberle, Francois Beauchemin and Kris Versteeg in the last few weeks, there's hope. From the Globe & Mail, here's Joffrey Lupul:
"Now that we're closing the gap, you start getting that belief more and more everyday," Lupul said. "We play two games this weekend, and I've already heard guys saying around the [dressing] room, if we win two games, we could be, theoretically, sitting tied for a playoff spot on the day of the trade deadline.
"So that's quite a turnaround from where we were 14 or 18 days ago."
Reimer's been a key part of that turnaround. His first start was a Battle of Ontario win on Jan. 1 at the Ottawa Senators, 5-1. He's given up two goals or less in 10 of his 15 starts. On Thursday night, in a wild game against the Montreal Canadiens, he surrendered four but was there when the Leafs needed him. Eight of his 10 wins have come on the road.
The Toronto Sun, in their assessment of 10 keys for the Leafs in this playoff push, wondered if Reimer can keep this up:
In order for the Leafs to continue their strong playoff push, he may have to.
Upon further review, who else is there? Veteran J-S Giguere's roller-coaster season has been a tale of on-again, off-again hip/groin problems, while Jonas Gustavsson tries to regain his lost confidence as he recovers from a third heart procedure.
Indeed, the fate of the Leafs - at least in the immediate future - seems to be in the young hands of the unflappable Reimer, who already has been given the nod by coach Ron Wilson to start against the Pittsburgh Penguins on Saturday and in Atlanta against the Thrashers on Sunday.
The Sun wonders if Reimer is "a flash in the pan." Burke, after his lightning-in-a-bottle start for the Devils in 1988, played 18 seasons of varying degrees of success. Others who started strong like Jim Carey and (painful as this may be) Andrew Raycroft failed to recapture that excellence again.
Reimer? What's the point of looking down the career path now? He's rescued the Leafs goaltending from injury and inconsistency. He's backstopped them into playoff contention. Leave the 'goalie of the future' for the future; right now, James Reimer is leading a Leafs team that has Jim Hughson quoting Hamlet and Toronto checking the standings for the right reasons again.