How Jaeden Nelson's 'best' has sparked the Ottawa 67's fast start to the OHL season

The inscription on the back of Jaeden Nelson’s mask, “Be Best,” is a phrase the Ottawa 67’s goalie has lived by through an Ontario Hockey League season that is less than a month old.

Case in point:

On Tuesday, the 19-year-old Nepean product was named the league’s goaltender of the week for the second consecutive week after posting a 1.59 goals-against average and a .950 save percentage while helping Ottawa to five of a possible six points on a three-game road trip.

Following a 2-1 overtime loss in Niagara, Nelson posted a 36-save, 3-0 shutout win in Erie on Saturday, then stopped 41 shots and a couple of shootout attempts for a 4-3 victory in Brampton less than 24 hours later.

Not only has Nelson been the top starting goalie in the OHL, but his overall season numbers to date — a 5-1-2 record with a 2.28 GAA and .925 save percentage — suggest he’s been the best in the country.

“It comes from a book I read two summers ago,” Nelson said of Ryan Holiday’s Discipline is Destiny: The Power of Self-Control, when asked about the words on the back of his mask. “Be best to me just kind of stuck out. It’s the name of one of the chapters, and it’s just something that reminds me every day to put my best foot forward, no matter how I feel. Every day I’m not going to be the most energetic, or there are other things going on outside hockey that might make it easy to kind of just throw the towel in that day. But I showed up, I’m here, and I might as well try and put my best foot forward and get a little bit better that day.

“Everything that I do, I’m just trying to do the absolute best that I can.”

Nelson was lined up to be the 67’s No. 1 guy last season before Ryder Fetterolf, a training camp walk-on from Pittsburgh, wrestled the job from him and ultimately walked away with the Canadian Hockey League goalie of the year award.

With Fetterolf gone home to play for Penn State in the NCAA, Nelson is not only the undisputed starter in Ottawa but has played all but 17 minutes of the team’s first eight games.

“Nelly’s success this season really started last season, and if you can go back further than that, started the year before,” said 67’s goalie coach Andrew Mercer. “But if you look at his stats and his play from Christmas on last year, it was outstanding. Obviously, he was overshadowed a little bit by what Ryder did the whole season, but from Christmas on he took his play, his whole preparation, every part of his game to a new level, and it showed. This season is just a continuation of that.”

While he hasn’t changed much in his technique, Nelson showed up at this year’s camp “in absolutely fantastic shape,” according to Mercer.

“So then he’s much quicker on his feet, gets to position quicker, he has more balance, and he’s able to sustain himself with the workload and practice much more,” said Mercer.

Nelson has started every one of the 67’s eight games and would have finished them all, too, if not for stumbling, with five goals allowed on 26 shots, in the second of back-to-back games separated by a three-hour bus ride from Peterborough.

Rookie Noah LaGambina came on in relief in that home opener and allowed five goals on 13 shots in the third period.

“We’ll worry (about overworking Nelson) as we progress,” said Mercer. “There’s the workload (in games) but then you have to manage it on the other end, right? We’re going to look at how many reps he takes in practice, how long he has the boots on every day, and try to make sure we limit it there. In college (Clarkson), we had a goalie play 41 games straight for us. So there, you have to manage the workload all around the game time to be able to allow him to play that many games.”

Nelson said playing a night game followed by a game day the next afternoon, which he has done twice now, has been a “learning experience.”

“I hadn’t played in back-to-back games until a few weeks ago, and the first time didn’t go great,” he said. “But it was my first experience, and yeah, I learned from it. The body is going to feel how the body’s going to feel. You try do everything you can to take care of it and make sure it feels as best as possible. But the reality of it is that you won’t feel 100 per cent every day, whether it’s practice or games or whatever. So it has its challenges, but at the end of the day, I try to focus on the good of it.”

And the good of it includes leading the 67’s to a fast start from the gate as well as the acknowledgement of being the OHL’s top goalie in consecutive weeks.

“The recognition always feels nice, but like it’s not really what we’re chasing at all,” said Nelson. “As a team, we’re just trying to grow, and I’m just trying to settle into my role on the team. Being a guy who is going to hopefully be turned to a lot throughout the whole year, and that’s all that is. The recognition always feels good individually, but it’s really about team success.”

As of Wednesday, Ottawa was one of just three teams in the 20-member OHL that had suffered only one regulation-time defeat, while the Sudbury Wolves (6-0-1) were the lone club that has taken at least a point from all its games.

The 67’s record of 5-1-2 had them tied for second in the East Division, tied for third in the Eastern Conference and tied for fourth in the overall standings, with games in hand on most teams.

“We’re a good team,” said winger Nic Whitehead, who had a goal in each of last weekend’s two wins and noted that playing in front of good goaltending brings a sense of “comfort” to the players. “You never know what’s going to happen, but yeah, I thought we’ve looked pretty good.”

The 67’s will be the road team in a neutral-site game played at the Cornwall Civic Complex on Friday against the Brampton Steelheads, the only team in the OHL that has yet to record a victory while scoring just 18 goals in eight games.

There’s speculation the league is trying to determine if Cornwall is a potential spot for relocation of an existing club.

The 67’s would be all for that.

“It’d be nice for travel, for us,” Whitehead said with a laugh.

“It’d be pretty cool,” Nelson, who had success playing in Cornwall before his OHL days, said of having an opponent living less than 100 kilometres down the road. “Our closest (road trip) is Kingston. That’s like an hour-and-a-half and a little bit away. So I think having an extra game a little bit closer could be good. You look at some other divisions, and they have 30-, 40-minute bus trips, which I feel could be pretty nice. So maybe the bus legs wouldn’t be as bad, and it’s kind of a quicker game-day prep. I think it could be fun if (Cornwall) were to eventually have a team.”

Ottawa rounds out its weekend by hosting the Oshawa Generals (4-5-0) at TD Place on Saturday (7 p.m.).