The History of the Washington Capitals(Est. 1973)
OLAF KOLZIG---OLIE THE GOALIE
OLAF KOLZIG CAPITALS STATS
WINS: 301 (1ST)
SAVES: 18013 (1ST)
SHUTOUTS: 35 (1ST)
MINUTES: 41261 (1ST)
GOALS AGAINST AVG: 2.70 (4TH)
Olaf Kölzig (born 6 April 1970), known as Olie the Goalie or Godzilla, is currently the goaltender coach and player development coach for the Washington Capitals of the National Hockey League (NHL). Except for 8 games with the Tampa Bay Lightning, he played the rest of his 14-year NHL career with the Capitals and is one of the greatest players in team history.
Kölzig was born in South Africa to German parents but grew up in several cities across Canada. His family moved to Union Bay, British Columbia when he was a teenager. Kölzig never applied for Canadian citizenship, which allowed him to represent Germany internationally. He was the first African-born player in the NHL. Kolzig ranks among the NHL's top 30 in career saves (15th with 18,233), wins (28th with 303), games (23rd with 719), and minutes (23rd with 41,671).
The Capitals selected him in the 1989 NHL Entry Draft. Kölzig played his first NHL game in the 1989–90 NHL season, but was sent down to the minors where he remained for several years. He spent several years in the American Hockey League (AHL) with the Baltimore Skipjacks, Rochester Americans, and Portland Pirates, and one year with the Hampton Roads Admirals of the East Coast Hockey League (ECHL). In 1994, as a member of the Pirates, he won both the 1994 Jack A. Butterfield Trophy as MVP of the AHL playoffs, and the 1994 Hap Holmes Memorial Award).
During the 1995–96 NHL season, the Capitals recalled him to serve as backup for Jim Carey. When the Capitals acquired Bill Ranford from the Boston Bruins for the 1996–97 NHL season, Kolzig remained as backup. Early in 1997, Ranford suffered an injury and Kölzig took over. Kölzig played well for the rest of the season, winning a total of 33 games and achieving a 2.20 goals against average. He backstopped the Capitals to the Stanley Cup finals, becoming only the tenth goalie in NHL history to record four shutouts in one postseason. Despite his success, the Capitals were swept in the finals by the defending champions, the Detroit Red Wings.
In 2000, he won the Vezina Trophy as the NHL's best goalie after going 41–20–11 with a 2.24 GAA and five shutouts. Kölzig also has the distinction of being one of four goaltenders to play a scoreless period during an NHL All-Star Game, which he did in 2000. He also played in the 1998 All-Star Game, in which he made 14 saves on 17 shots. During the 2004–05 NHL lock-out he signed with the German club Eisbären Berlin.
On 11 February 2006, Kölzig signed a two-year, $10.9 million extension with the Capitals. In February 2007, in the midst of a 19–19–5 season, Kölzig tore his medial collateral ligament (MCL). Prior to this injury, Kölzig had missed only 18 games and never more than four in a row.
In February 2008, the Capitals acquired goalie Cristobal Huet, who gradually took over as starting goaltender. Despite this, on 12 March Kölzig became the twenty-third goalie to win 300 games. The Capitals qualified for the playoffs, and Huet started every game in their first round series against the Philadelphia Flyers. The Capitals lost in seven games. A few weeks after their elimination, Kölzig announced he did not intend to return to the team. At the time, he was the last remaining Capital to have worn the original red, white and blue uniform and the blue jersey from 1995.
On 1 July 2008, Kölzig became an unrestricted free agent and signed a $1.5 million, 1-year contract with the Tampa Bay Lightning, where he served as the back-up goalie to Mike Smith. Upon Kolzig's return to D.C. as a member of Tampa Bay, he was loudly cheered and a video in tribute to his time with the Caps was shown. On 28 January 2009, it was announced that Kölzig would miss the rest of the 2008–09 season due to a ruptured biceps tendon in his left arm.
He was traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs along with Jamie Heward, Andy Rogers and a 4th round pick on 4 March 2009 as part of a trade deadline deal for Richard Petiot. As he was at that time suffering from an injury that would see him out for the rest of the 2008–09 season, the end of which would also see his contract expire, his acquisition from Tampa Bay was largely seen as an effort by Toronto general manager Brian Burke to "buy" the 4th round pick by taking on Kölzig's deadweight salary.
On 23 September 2009, Kölzig announced his retirement from the NHL. Later that year, Kölzig was named to the ECHL Hall of Fame at the 2010 ECHL All-Star Game in Ontario, California.[11]
The Capitals have not issued Kölzig's number 37 since his retirement. In 2004, the Capitals held a vote for fans to determine the top 30 players in the franchise history to celebrate their 30th season in the league. Kölzig's 2,038 votes led all players.
The Monster Hulking Capitals goaltender Olaf Kolzig, a.k.a. Godzilla, has not only shed his backup status but has also emerged as one of the NHL's premier players by finally taming his ferocious temper
By Michael Farber, Sports Illustrated, 10/26/98
There had been almost a quarter century of hockey purgatory, of squandered playoff series, of short springs pungent with thesmell of disaster. In a suburban dungeon of an arena outside a city where the only two sports that mattered were pro football
and political football, the Washington Capitals were the NHL's unloved child, a nice enough team, sure, but a forsaken one.Then last fall the Caps moved into a new arena downtown, into the gut of the city, if not quite into its soul, and by season's
end they were storming to the Stanley Cup finals. Throughout their miraculous run, one creature towered over everything. Yes,there really is a Godzilla.
His name is Olaf Kolzig. He has been called Godzilla since 1992, when he was tagged with the nickname by fans because of his size(now 6'3", 225 pounds) and temper. Kolzig might well have earned the moniker for his horrifying record in his first six NHLseasons (14-36-8). But last year, at age 27, he transformed himself from a career backup with a reputation for finding a wayto lose into what Washington coach Ron Wilson calls "one of the top five goalies in the league, easy."
Before the Montreal Canadiens' back-to-back games against Washington and the Buffalo Sabres last weekend, Canadiens coachAlain Vigneault likened the prospect of meeting Kolzig and two-time MVP Dominik Hasek on consecutive nights to a baseballteam's facing Kevin Brown one evening and Greg Maddux the next. Kolzig, who stopped 25 shots in a 2-2 tie with Montreal lastFriday, didn't even try to suppress a grin when told of Vigneault's comment. "That's better than being Mitch Williams,"Kolzig said, "like I was a few years ago."
Kolzig used to be the Wild Thing in the net, and the reason he was in contention for the Conn Smythe Trophy last spring and the reason he's off to a terrific start this season (through Sunday he was 2-1-1 with a 1.48 goals-against average and one shutout) is that he finally tamed his savage instincts. Kolzig found thatby controlling himself he could master others. He curbed his hotheadedness and became an elite goalie. "Curbed? Did you say
curbed?" Capitals backup goalie Rick Tabaracci asks in mock surprise. "How closely have you been watching?"
O.K., so Godzilla hasn't turned into Barney. But Kolzig, who once could have supplied enough kindling to fire up every barbecue in Georgetown with all his splintered sticks, has broken just one since training camp began last month. He smashed it over the crossbar at the end of a practice last week, a justifiable reaction considering that teammates Kelly Miller and Mark Tinordi, not exactly the Great One and Super Mario, had just slipped two shots over his glove, the same spot where the Detroit Red Wings' Doug Brown beat Kolzig in a 3-2 Washington loss the night before. You mess with Godzilla at your peril, even when he's a two-inch computer-generated image on giant-screen television. When PlayStation reps brought one of their video games to the Capitals' practice rink three days before the season opener, defenseman Joe Reekie challenged Kolzig: Reekie's Team Canada, starring Raymond Bourque, versus Kolzig's Team Germany, starring Olaf Kolzig. "Naturally I give the puck to Bourque, and he beats Olie with a slap shot," Reekie says. "Olie gets angry, and when I'm not looking, he punches me in the shoulder." "True," says Kolzig, a South African-born German citizen who moved with his family to Canada when he was four. "In this game, you have to pay the price."
For years Kolzig paid a steep price for his combative nature. He always wanted to play extraordinarily well, and he would beat himself up when he didn't. He was Washington's first-round draft choice in June 1989, played his first NHL game four months later at age 19 and never considered himself a career backup, even as he rode the pine. But he unwittingly developed a backup's mentality: After allowing a bad goal, he'd fear that he'd have to wait weeks for another chance to play. Kolzig had an opportunity to win the starting job going into the 1995-96 season, after the Capitals traded Don Beaupre, but Washington opened the lockout-shortened campaign 2-8-2. A hot minor league goalie, Jim Carey, was summoned to Washington and wound up winning the Vezina Trophy that season. Carey couldn't catch a cold in the playoffs the next two years, while Kolzig had three wins and a 1.87 goals-against average, but Kolzig's reckless
style and snits made him too unreliable to be No. 1.
In September 1996 then Capitals coach Jim Schoenfeld, now behind the bench for the Phoenix Coyotes, was blunt: He told Kolzigthat temper tantrums in practice were hurting him and disrupting the Caps. "That was a wake-up call," Kolzig says. "I realized Ididn't have too many chances left to play in the NHL. I started to channel my competitiveness more, but it got tough playingonly once every few weeks, and I went back to taking out my frustrations. If you're a forward or a defenseman, you can let out your frustrations by running someone or shootingthe puck as hard as you can. I thought maybe I was playing the wrong position."
Wilson, who succeeded Schoenfeld in June 1997, tried a different tack. After one stick-smashing incident in last year's trainingcamp, Wilson skated by Kolzig and kiddingly told him he looked like a big jerk. Soon Washington players were chiming in with achorus of good-natured abuse. "He deserved the ridicule of his teammates," Wilson says. "They got to him, and they enjoyedgetting to him because those volcanic eruptions were funny. Olie's a funny guy. I just wanted him to focus on the puck, but he was more worried about everyone's reaction to him. He cared more about what Joe Reekie thought than stopping the puck." Kolzig needed to grow thicker skin. He also needed help from the only man in hockey who seemed to believe in him. Last year Capitals general manager George McPhee hired an owlish,
soft-spoken hockey itinerant named Dave Prior as Washington's goalie instructor. Prior had met Kolzig in 1989, when Prior waswith NHL Central Scouting and Kolzig was playing junior hockey in the Western League. They became reacquainted in the summer of
'96, when Prior was a consultant to Germany's World Cup team and Kolzig was making his international debut.
Prior liked Kolzig's size and agility but wanted to make him play bigger. Kolzig, who's a butterfly-style goalie, had always stationed himself three or four feet outside the crease even though with his girth he could have blotted out the net by playing at the top of the crease. He also would follow his wanderlust after rebounds instead of setting himself to stop the next shot. Prior had Kolzig play deeper and cut down on his roaming. "People looked at him and wondered why he couldn't win, why he couldn't be a Number 1," Prior says. "He just needed some adjustments."
Kolzig also needed another chance, one that came in the first period of Washington's 1997-98 opener when starter Bill Ranford was struck in the groin by a shot. For the next three weeks, as Ranford rehabilitated his injury and auditioned for the Vienna Boys' Choir, the Capitals had no option but Kolzig. He never relinquished the job, winning 33 matches, going to the All-Star Game and putting together a 2-0 record for Germany in the Nagano Olympics. Kolzig's only slump came immediately after the Games, when he lost five straight starts. "I thought that maybe the run was over," Kolzig says, "and wondered if I might be a flash in the pan."
The dip occurred when Prior was out of town. When Prior returned, he ran a videotape that convinced Kolzig he'd been playing better than his record indicated. Prior also repositioned him closer to the net. Kolzig finished the regular season with an 11-3-1 surge, and some Caps began calling PriorMoses for having led Kolzig out of the wilderness.
For a franchise that had almost consigned itself to being destiny's doormats--"You came to believe that this organization was cursed when the playoffs came around," Kolzig says--the serendipity of Godzilla's cinematic release last spring, whenKolzig was leading the Caps to the Cup finals, was too good to be true. Washington might be a little fuzzy on hockey, but it can spot a good story. MCI Center was suddenly populated with blowup Godzilla dolls. Kolzig, nearly impeccable with a .941 save percentage and four shutouts while outplaying Hasek in the
Eastern Conference finals, became the face of the Capitals' long-awaited success. He was glib, witty and handsome. He was also extroverted, a trait he ascribes to his upbringing. Olaf grew up as a hotel brat (his father, Axel, worked as afood-and-beverage manager for hotel chains) and lived a bedouin-and-breakfast existence, moving 23 times in 28 years. Heknew how to make friends, and he made plenty of new ones with his performance last season. "Olie became our backbone," Reekiesays. "Everyone in the dressing room liked him because he was so intense, and people who saw him interviewed on TV liked him because they could tell he was genuine. Olie was just one of the guys you root for." Now whenever Godzilla looks as though he might erupt in practice, Wilson skates over to egg him on. Kolzig ignores Wilson's taunts, refusing to give him the satisfaction of a tantrum. If he sticks to his nonaggression policy, he'll end up resembling the green plush Godzilla he keeps in his truck (license plate: ZILLA), one that looks more likely to nuzzle itsvictims than stomp them.
