Collin Delia ‘frothing at the mouth’ as he eyes Blackhawks’ vacant starting goalie job

Collin Delia hasn’t played in the NHL since spring of 2019, but he’s the odds-on favorite to be the Blackhawks’ starting goalie this coming season. | Matthew Stockman/Getty Images

Collin Delia, halfway through an in-depth discussion about rebound control, pauses when he hears his five-month-old baby, Anderson, wailing in the distance.

“He’s crying right now,” Delia said, a bright smile quickly spreading across his face. “He must be hungry.”

The joy now spread by Anderson’s presence serves as a wholly welcome change from the emotionally chaotic past year that Delia endured — a year during which his personal life often detracted from his hockey career.

Last fall, Delia and his girlfriend, Ava Lammers, were shocked by an unexpected pregnancy and overwhelmed with health complications. Delia’s play with the Rockford IceHogs suffered, starting the season 2-5-0 with an .863 save percentage.

He re-established himself as one of the AHL’s top goaltenders after Dec. 3, going 14-8-1 with a .927 save percentage between then and March 7, only to watch a global pandemic strike in the final months of his Lammers’ pregnancy.

He anticipated a full offseason of family time following Anderson’s birth June 10, only to be pulled away by the NHL’s restart. Then he lost the training camp competition to Malcolm Subban and sat alone and idle, as the third string goalie, for a month in the NHL playoff bubble.

But this autumn, Delia has finally restored order to his life. He’s spent copious time with Lammers and Anderson at home. He’s vacationed with family on both coasts. He’s reflected on the ups and downs of the 2019-20 season and learned from the low points.

“I don’t think it’s that I wasn’t ready, [but] there was a lot on my plate that I was focusing on instead,” he said. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t distracted... There was a little bit of discontentment on my part because I felt cheated of that time with my boy.

“But looking back, you have a job, you have a responsibility, you’re being paid by the organization and they expect a certain level of professionalism and acuity. While there is sacrifice on my behalf, on my family’s behalf, if you’re going to achieve anything, you’re sacrificing where some people may not want to sacrifice.”

It’s with that reinvigorated drive that Delia will attack the upcoming 2021 season.

And as it turns out, an enormous opportunity awaits: with Corey Crawford gone and the Hawks committed to their young goalies, the starting job lies wide open for him to claim.

“I’d be remiss if I said I wasn’t frothing at the mouth,” Delia said. “It’s an opportunity not many people get, and I don’t want to let that pass me by.”

The California native has tasted the NHL before, filling in admirably — 6-4-3 with a .908 save percentage — on an injury-plagued Hawks team at the end of 2018-19.

The Hawks gave him a three-year contract extension at that season’s conclusion, making Delia believe he’d won the backup job, only to bring in Robin Lehner and cast Delia back to a distant third on the depth chart.

“When they signed Robin, I was kind of cutting my teeth because I thought I earned the position,” he said. “But then coming full circle, I was like, ‘You can’t try to earn a position as a backup goalie. You try to earn the starting position.’”

With the window to do exactly that now as open as it’ll ever be, the same philosophical approach that Delia used to accept Lehner’s presence may now be his greatest sales pitch to the Hawks.

Delia started Pilates classes this fall to strengthen his core muscles.

Simply put, Delia is a very smart, thoughtful guy. And his level of intelligence provides a huge advantage at the goaltending position. Consider this explanation of his offseason training as proof.

“You have to take your game to the outer bounds and see how you really do in situations where you’re uncomfortable, and then from those situations, you can find growth and you can simplify things,” he said. “For me, it’s continuing to...[keep] things simple but also relying on facets of my game that make me good, like my ability to stay calm under pressure or just my skating ability, my post work, my edges.”

Brian Daccord, a Massachusetts-based goalie coach (now affiliated with the Coyotes) who has trained Delia since his years at Merrimack College, has seen that hockey intelligence firsthand.

“He thinks way beyond what a lot of guys will normally do,” Daccord said. “Are you going to bring the mental energy necessary to training and to practice? That’s what separates a lot of guys. And that’s why someone like him, who may have equal athletic abilities, may not be where he’s at, because Collin has that extra level of focus.”

Delia recently revisited Daccord’s company, Stop It Goaltending, to work on his rebound control.

In any given situation, making the save is obviously most important, but controlling where the puck goes afterward is the type of advanced skill that Delia’s analytical psyche can help him master.

“A goaltender that has such good awareness, good goalie IQ, that can he read a play, can feel a situation, he can put pucks in places where his teammates can get it,” Daccord said.

“For instance, if there’s an odd-man rush — say it’s a 3-on-2 — and we have a late backchecker,” Delia said. “If at the last second, I can identify the shot angle and I can locate my backchecker and put that rebound in an area where he can recover it and then go the other way, that’s the next echelon of rebound control.”

Delia, with Lammers’ encouragement, also started Pilates classes in Chicago this fall.

His twice-weekly private lessons at Frog Temple Studio in Logan Square are designed to strengthen the smaller, overlooked muscle groups in his core and supplement his more mainstream-style workouts with Hawks trainer Paul Goodman.

“[Pilates is] fun and new and challenging, but it also builds upon a foundation that we — as hockey players — work years and years to create,” Delia said. “So much of what [goalies] do stems from having a strong and mobile core and being able to change directions quickly and be safe in vulnerable positions.”

Armed with his refreshed mental state, refined rebound control and strengthened core, Delia’s stars may be aligning at the perfect time.

Another camp battle against Subban and Kevin Lankinen still lies between him and the outright starting role, yet Delia likely enters the winter as the odds-on favorite.

“Without a doubt, I think I can earn that job,” he said. “There’s no complacency when it comes to training camp. Every single day you step on the ice, you’re proving how much better you are than the other two guys. We all have to have that mindset.”