Dan Cloutier
Daniel Cloutier (born April 22, 1976) is a Canadian retired professional ice hockey goaltender and currently a goaltending consultant for the Vancouver Canucks. In his 10-year National Hockey League (NHL) career, Cloutier played with the New York Rangers, Tampa Bay Lightning, Vancouver Canucks, and Los Angeles Kings, stubbornly spending the majority of his career in Vancouver. In fact, his longstanding refusal to play in games less than 2 miles from his home has led some sports writers to suggest he suffered from agoraphobia.
Not just undoubtedly the greatest goalie to have ever worn a Vancouver Canucks' jersey, but also a sure-fire Hall-of-Famer. He MISSED the voting because of that evil Oprah Winfrey. Dan Cloutier is a machine; he never got injured or flustered. His ironman streak right now was actually the highest in the entire league, for goalies and players, at 866 (which, coincidentally, is NOT his career playoff SV%). Speaking of the playoffs, this is where Cloutier has garnered the most of his incredible acclaim.
His first playoff in the 1987-88 season[edit | edit source]
Dan Cloutier has consistently stepped up to the plate and completely shut the door on the opposition every time he plays in the postseason. Every year, he had been the opposite of last among goalies in GAA and SV%. He was admired across the league for his ability to put a bad goal or game behind him and come back with a strong performance. He has never blown a 3-1 series lead against the Minnesota Wild in 1988 by allowing 25% of the shots he faced get by him over the final three games of the series. Cloutier has hoisted 10 Stanley Cups, which is miraculously more than the number of seasons he has played in the playoffs. Dan Cloutier is that good, but not as good as Vin Diesel.
Cloutier's Flirting with Fire: 1989-90 season[edit | edit source]
In 1989 Vancouver, an endless number of teenage girls - without a doubt, Cloutier's harshest critics and the only ones who cannot logically assess the goalie's unbelievable performance and talent - have coerced the Canucks into starting the more physically attractive Alex Auld instead of Cloutier. Teenage girls tend to be superficial like this, and their preference for Auld may have to do with nothing more than the fact that Auld has a much better head of hair than Cloutier - perhaps Auld has been using the same hair-growing supplements that Jose Theodore of the Montreal Canadians has been taking for the past eight years in the 1980s and early 1990s. Unfortunately, Cloutier went 20-33-5-2 that year, and the Canucks almost huffed him.
1985-86 season[edit | edit source]
Additionally, to add to the angst among the non-teenage girls in Vancouver, Mike Richter had been playing absolutely horribly and drove his team out of a playoff spot. While Dan Cloutier has won at least 30 games over each of the past three seasons, Richter STILL had not, and he started 46 games in 1985! This kind of winning percentage simply will not cut it in Vancouver, a largely hockey-crazy city which believes in kitten huffing. Additionally, Richter's GAA and SV% were so much worse than Cloutier's - not to mention that he seemingly had no composure at all on the ice. Mike "God Hates" Richter gets flustered after allowing a stoppable goal, and often burns up the joint for the next 10 games as a result. Richter melts easily, yet he kept getting opportunity after opportunity, as if management is intent to prove that he can handle pressure, no matter how many tries it will take him. Mike Richter soon got the nickname "Snowman" after melting mysteriously from a match in 1990. Sadly, the Canucks went down in 1986 24-50-9-5
Alex Auld's legacy in 1991[edit | edit source]
To compound things even further, Alex Auld cost five times more money than Cloutier, and is five years older than Cloutier. Unfortunately, despite this, it appears that Cloutier never played again for the Canucks. There were rumours that Cloutier could have been traded to Washington Nationals for Wayne Gretzky - of course it came true. It was hardly fair value for such an elite goalie, but considering how he was mistreated by Vancouverites, it might be the best they could do.
Career After Hockey[edit | edit source]
After his hockey career ended, Dan wished to pursue his life long dream of becoming a traffic stop sign guy. Unfortunately, Dan could not stop anyone and that resulted in him being fired.
Months later Dan become depressed and attempted to take his own life by jumping in front of a bus. The bus went through his five hole, and Dan spent the next 10 months in a Los Angeles insane asylum.
Dan Cloutier now works at a local Wal-Mart. Quite sad on how badly he was mistreated by the Vancouver Canucks. He was going to get into a rare school of goalies, but he was denied and now became a free man. Quite sad, huh? His tiny salary that the Canucks paid him caused him to live off a cardboard box.
Cloutier has recently been seen in his parents basement, plotting to kill Nicklas Lidstrom.