TRETIAK'S GOLDEN GIRL
Due to a background in competitive gymnastics, Kelsey Neumann was one of the youngest goalies ever admitted to Tretiak’s training camp.
Buffalo Beauts goaltender Kelsey Neumann lists Vladislav Tretiak as her favorite hockey player of all time. It is an interesting choice for a twenty-nine year old who grew up Texas, particularly in a generation that—much to our mutual chagrin—often does not comprehend his virtuosity.
But NWHL pro Kelsey Neumann is not some passive idolizer of Tretiak, or a YouTube fiend who unceremoniously stumbled on Red Army footage during a deep-dive. She is, in fact, one of his protégées—among the youngest and very few female goaltenders to ever attend his North American training camps. The man she casually refers to as “Vladdy” was an enigmatic colossus to hockey fans in the western world, a legacy still hard to grasp in the context of today’s game: ten World Championships, four Olympic medals—three of which were gold, and that one notorious silver.
From Neumann’s experience of the Soviet goaltending legend to their unexpected reunion in Russia, I caught up with Tretiak’s former student who carries gifts of his legacy to a new generation of female goaltenders.
Gillian Kemmerer (GK): Goalies who were trained by Vladislav Tretiak—Martin Brodeur, Dominik Hašek, Kelsey Neumann. Surely that wins you some clout with the kids you coach.
Kelsey Neumann (KN): I was talking with two Junior B goalies recently, I think they were both eighteen or nineteen. I mentioned Tretiak and both of them were like, "Who's that?" And I'm like, "Wait a minute, hold on…1980 Olympics, the Russian goalie. We probably wouldn't have won that game if they hadn't pulled him. What?" The kids were like, "I just don't know the name."
GK: That hurts my heart. Did you assign a poster presentation?
KN: I should’ve said, "You need to make a PowerPoint and you're telling me everything that you found out about him.” How does that even happen? I get it with the younger kids that I coach because they might not have seen Miracle yet. But the older guys, the eighteen and nineteen year olds? I don't understand. You play hockey, you play juniors, you have road trips. I guarantee you've seen the movie. That should be Goalie 101. You have to know who he is in order to be a goalie.
Neumann (age eight) and Tretiak pose at her first training camp in Toronto.
GK: Your education in Soviet hockey came earlier than most. How old were you when you first attended Tretiak's goaltending camp?
KN: My first camp was in Toronto when I was eight. Besides his grandson [Maxim], I guess I was one of the youngest that he ever let in to his camps. My favorite picture is of Tretiak and me—I’m eight and I still fit in the net. I have my little American do-rag on and I’m in Canada, so that should mean something. I don't know what my mom was thinking.
GK: Why do you think that he agreed to take you on at such a young age?
KN: We lived in Texas at the time and I was on the competitive gymnastics track. We played hockey for fun because we were still in San Antonio. When my mom had called to sign my brother up, she mentioned that her daughter was eight, and they were like, "That's really young and it's a lot of hours. I don't know if she'll be able to handle that." My mom was like, "Listen, this kid spends six hours in the gym. I think she'll be able to handle it. And then she goes and plays hockey and then does softball." I guess that was what persuaded them.
GK: The Soviet hockey program was so big on agility—the incorporation of gymnastics and dance. I am sure Tretiak appreciated that background.
KN: It’s funny because I'm sure you've heard some of his stories about somersaults on the ice after goals?
GK: That was Tarasov’s classic punishment for hockey players.
Tretiak with the father of Soviet hockey and his beloved Red Army coach, Anatoli Tarasov.
KN: Right. Little Kelsey thought that sounded like a fun idea, so it probably wasn't the best for me to hear that story. I told my Dad. I was like, "Dad, Tretiak had to do somersaults when he gave up a goal in practice. I don't think I can do that for every goal, but maybe really bad goals. I'll keep track of them, and then after the drill's over…” Since he was my goalie coach typically during the season, he would stand there and he would come up to me afterward like, "Okay, how many bad goals?" I'm like, "Five." He's like, "Okay, go. Five somersaults."
GK: What are some of the drills or nuggets of wisdom that you took from Tretiak’s camps?
KN: The game has changed so much. I remember that we were doing two pad stacks at camp. I remember being little and thinking it was so cool, but now it's more of a desperation save.
Vladdy would always say, "Don't be a lazy goalie." That's definitely something that I've carried over. There are times when some of my kids are definitely not putting in their best effort, and I'll go up to them like he used to, point at them and be like, "No lazy goalie.” And then skate away. My kids obviously have no clue what I'm talking about. The work ethic and not giving up on pucks are definitely things that I took from him. I think I'm not as robotic as some…I don't even know how to describe my goaltending style. I know some coaches really like the goalies that are more uniform, whereas he always taught us that you do what you’ve got to do to stop the puck. It might not always look pretty, but as long as it's not in the net, I'm happy.
We always had two classrooms a day. He typically showed up to the first and last classroom, but the whole staff bought into his teachings and his style. They all knew what he wanted, what he expected. He would tell us stories about his trainings and watch video. Sometimes it would be video of him or video of ourselves doing drills that day. I got to watch him go through the same things that he was putting me through. That propelled me to want to be as good as him. Obviously, I'm not as good as him because no one is, but that was one of my driving forces.
When we were on the ice, he would come around and actually talk to you. If he saw something wrong, he would help you through it. I know there was at least one time throughout the years that I went to camp that he definitely had on his bottom half and was doing his little ... I don't even know what it's called, the half-butterfly thing, and was showing it to us. When we would go to dryland, obviously, we had seen video of him doing this. We're like, "Damn, he does do that. Okay." I don't even remember how old he was when he ran the camps, but he was still doing it. I hope that I can be that agile when I'm his age. But I think during dryland more than anything, we definitely got more of the Russian-style stuff, especially on the days when the coaches got to use the tennis rackets, and fire tennis balls at us and make us do crazy things.
Neumann sports a Tretiak #20 jersey at camp in Minnesota.
GK: Crazy things such as….?
KN: One day you would bring your blocker, glove, and stick. We would face the wall, and the coaches would either throw or hit the ball with a tennis racket off the wall, and we'd have to react to it. Then it would be facing them, we would have to do different things…a somersault or the little Russian dance kind of thing.
Everyone's favorite drill was the dancing goalie. One goalie is in the net, and the other goalie is standing in front of them and just full-on dancing. We had kids that would try to do break dance moves, the robot, just trying to be some type of a screen, but an out-of-the-box screen. A lot of his drills were out of the box.
His one drill that I definitely use for conditioning is called the rollover drill. You typically have two shooters on the dots. The first shot, you're completely squared to one of the shooters. Then drop into a butterfly, do a barrel roll or two, depending on how little you are and how good at rolling distance-wise you are. Then you have to pop back up and try to get square for the next shot. The shooter's going to shoot it once you're on your feet.
GK: I've interviewed Tretiak once, I've been in his presence twice. For someone who is so formidable and once a part of the Soviet machine, I've always been struck by how gentle he is. I'm curious, as a coach, what his demeanor was like toward you.
KN: He was always very kind. He was definitely strict and expected a lot out of you. If he felt like you were not putting in your best work, he was going to call you lazy. I heard him say it once to my brother, and I was like, “Oh my God, I don't ever want him to say that to me.” He was on the ice, off the ice, very kind, very gentle. We were lucky because his wife would typically come to Minnesota with his grandson Max. We would go to the beach with them in the evening after camp was over. All of us would go to the beach and just hang out, or have dinner and stuff. It was something that I looked forward to every summer just because I knew he was going to push me, but he was also going to be someone that was super kind and gentle, as you said.
GK: What is the one memory you cherish most from your time together?
A pennant from Tretiak’s youth tournament, hosted annually in Moscow.
KN: Vladdy ran a tournament in Russia, a youth tournament. For the longest time, he had been asking my dad to put together a team to go to this tournament. It just never worked because we were always in Texas and no one in Texas apparently wanted to go to Russia. But when we moved to Michigan, I had tried out for a boys’ team that was going to Russia. At the time, I didn't put two and two together that it was going to be his tournament. So I went, I made the team. I got to go to Russia, I got to play in his tournament. I love all the time that I got with him at camp and everything, but to have him actually be able to watch me in a game was a huge highlight.
At the end of the tournament, I don't know that my team won a game—the Russian teams were very good. I was the only girl to compete, so I was selected as “goalie of the tournament” or something. It was presented by Vladdy himself. For me, that was a big moment, because here's the guy that I've been training with since I was eight every summer, and that I’ve idolized since I met him. To have him be able to watch me play, and then to be the one to present that award to me and things like that was really cool.
GK: I cannot believe that you were the only girl in the entirety of a hockey tournament in Russia. Women’s hockey only recently established itself in the public eye there, so I am sure there were questions.
KN: My Mom made friends with these two older guys, I don't really know. I guess they had been asking her how she could let her daughter be a goalie because at the time, female hockey wasn't really a thing yet in Russia. And goalie, because of Vladdy, was such an honored position. My mom was like, "Because she wanted to."
Anyway, these two guys had ties to Vladdy and hockey. They gave me medals after two different games. One of the medals was actually a medal that Tretiak had won when he was younger. They said it was a medal that he had won and he wanted to give it to me. Those are memories that I definitely cherish.
Tretiak poses with Neumann’s travel team, who sported replica 1980 “Miracle” jerseys in Russia.
GK: Did any smart-mouthed kid ever ask Tretiak about getting pulled in 1980?
KN: I'm sure someone in the older group probably did, but I don't know that anyone really asked him how he felt getting pulled. But I know that the year I went to Russia, Miracle had just come out. So of course, our jerseys were replicas of the 1980 jerseys.
GK: Hold on a second. You wore replica jerseys of the 1980 U.S. Olympic Team to Russia?
KN: We were fine, we had a bodyguard. But it was hilarious because, obviously, I don't think that Miracle came out in Russia. My teammates decided to go to the black market one day to look for the movie. We're thirteen years old and I'm like, "I don't know that that's what you should be looking for in Russia.”
Then the next summer, Miracle was out on DVD. There were definitely some kids that brought the DVD for Tretiak to sign because he would give autographs after our last skate of the camp.
GK: What was his reaction?
KN: I remember standing there and one of our friends goes, "Vladdy, will you sign my copy of Miracle?" And he was like, "Yeah, that's fine." He chuckled a little bit and he goes, "America, one medal. Russia, many medals."
GK: You have started coaching goalies yourself. What has that experience been like, and what lessons have you taken from Tretiak into your new venture?
Neumann on the ice in Buffalo with one of her youngest students.
KN: I started my own goalie coaching consultant business. I have eight or so youth teams that I'm going to be working with here in Buffalo—primarily girls. Being the only girl at goalie camp almost every year until I started doing the NAHA goalie camp, I’m like, okay, I want to make sure that the girls get the same attention that boys get.
When I moved to Buffalo for grad school, I really wanted to start giving back to the sport that gave me so much. I realized that there were so many girls’ teams that weren't invested in the development of their goalies. I would see goalie coaches on the ice with all of these boys' teams and I was like, “Where are the female goalie coaches?” I realized that it was something I could do.
It has been really nice to see [the business] grow. I try to be a mix of Tretiak, my Dad and some of the other coaches that I've met and worked with and coached with along the way. But my Dad and Tretiak are the two that I always come back to when it comes to talking to the kids about why we're doing certain drills.
When I sit back and think about all of the people that helped me, and now to see my impact with some of my kids, I'm like, damn. It's life-changing, as cheesy as that might sound. But it just fuels my passion to want to do it more and more.
All photos in this article were kindly provided by the Neumann family with the exception of the Tarasov and Tretiak archive portrait (TASS).
