St. Charles Chill Invites former UND goalie Tate Maris To Training Camp

Seal of the University of North Dakota (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I would mark this story down in the nice story department. Nice to see that Tate Maris has a chance to play after college, having watched Maris practice quite a bit the past two seasons, I have thought that he developed nicely during his time at UND. It also doesn’t hurt to have former UND goalie Karl Goehring as your goalie coach as well.

Randall Ritchey, St Louis Game Time – Tate Maris, 23, attended The University of North Dakota and played as the third string goalie for the Fighting Souix for four years, has a chance to come into the Chill's training camp and compete for a back up position. The 5-foot-9 goaltender joined tryouts on the last day and was dominate in net. Rivers spoke on Maris and his joining the team during tryouts, "Maris came in on the last day and absolutely stood on his head, to the point in which we couldn't turn him away. He showed us enough in one day that he had the ability to play."

Maris truly was the best goalie on the ice during the scrimmage on Sunday, making countless highlight reel saves. Maris described his style of play, "I'm more of a hybrid style goalie. I'll do whatever it takes to stop the puck in the most controlled way, but sometimes desperation is needed. I worked a lot with Karl Goehring at North Dakota on improving my puck tracking skills and my lateral movement and it really helped improve my game." Maris also talked about what it takes to make the team out of training camp. "I have to do whatever it takes. The only thing that can hold me back is myself, so there is no excuse for not giving it my all. The game plan is to head back to Grand Forks, ND and bust my butt for a few weeks, come back here in October and play my best."

Tate Maris Tweet

I love you all; thank you for all the love and support over the last four years #siouxforever twitter.com/TAT3MARI5/stat…
— Tate Maris (@TAT3MARI5) March 31, 2013

Tate's tweet, kind of put's it all in perspective. College athletes only get four years and then it's over...

Tate Maris takes the ice

That was one of my favorite moments of the season, it was a classy move by the UND coaching staff, to give Tate Maris a few moments between the pipes, it was nice to see. The post game press conference was pretty cool as well. Last night on Twitter, the #TateMarisWatch picked up some serious momentum.

What was more impressive, coach Hakstol pulled Clarke Saunders, who at the time, had a 27 shot shutout going and put in Tate Maris, that to me was cool because, it showed a commitment to a team player and not just individual's numbers. The team worked hard to preserved the shutout and I thought Tate looked good in net.