Alex Lyon is one of the most interesting people in hockey.
Unlike many goalies or professional athletes, Lyon doesn’t believe in superstition. He’s not active on social media. He’s solely focused on one thing, which he calls a year-round job: stopping pucks.
Lyon has played in nearly every corner of the country, carrying his thoughtful and charismatic personality with him as he plays for the fifth different team in his NHL career in Buffalo.
A native of Baudette, Minnesota, and the “State of Hockey,” Lyon – like many Minnesota natives – grew up watching the old Western College Hockey Association. Despite winning Minnesota Senior Goalie of the Year at Lake of the Woods High School, he wasn’t recruited to any local schools and instead continued his family legacy of going to Yale.
Lyon is no stranger to being the underdog; it’s become a key dynamic of his mentality. Following his three-year career at Yale, he signed as an undrafted free agent with Philadelphia in 2016-17. From there, he spent seven years moving between the AHL and NHL before finally earning a full-time role the past two seasons with Detroit.
He’s taken on a workhorse role early in his Sabres tenure, having started the first six games of the season. He’s posted a .924 save percentage on an NHL-high 198 shots faced and earned his fifth career shutout against Florida on Saturday.
Sabres.com spoke with “The Lion King” following practice on Friday to talk about his time growing up in small town Minnesota, his AHL championship pedigree, and one of the longest hockey games ever played.
Sabres.com: You’ve been with five different NHL organizations. What’ve you learned about how to adjust to a new team quickly?
Lyon: “I think what you learn is it’s not worth worrying about things that just don’t matter. Being able to control what you can control. At the end of the day, I keep a job if I can keep the puck out of the net and I can win games. So that’s always where my focus remains.”
Sabres.com: You were a fourth-generation Yale student, what does it mean to you to continue that family legacy?
Lyon: “I’m actually quite a bit of a contrarian by personality so I didn’t really want to go there. I talked to them pretty early on in the process. This is all 15 years ago now but I was the kid who was like, ‘Oh, my dad went there, there’s no way I want to go.’ For sure happy now, but I don’t think that my family is the type of family where we live and breathe Yale Bulldogs. It’s not the kind of person I am, that’s not the kind of person my dad is. It’s cool for sure. Obviously you’re proud of going to that kind of institute.”
Sabres.com: You’re a Baudette, Minnesota kid, won Minnesota Senior Goalie of the Year. Was there pressure to go to one of the schools in Minnesota or even North Dakota?
Lyon: “I would have loved to, for sure, but I wasn’t recruited there. I grew up every weekend watching the Gophers [University of Minnesota], North Dakota, Duluth. I liked them all. Actually, when I was there it was WCHA – so Wisconsin, Denver. Colorado College was really good at that time. Those are schools that I love, but I just wasn’t very highly recruited to be quite honest with you and so academics swayed me into [Yale].”
Sabres.com: You’re one of two NHL players to come from Baudette. There were just over 20 male students in your graduating class at Lake of the Woods. How do you honor your hometown?
Lyon: “Like anybody in your 20s, you kind of stray away from it and maybe explore different avenues of life. But, the older I get, the more I find myself wanting to find those roots. When you’re from a small town, it’s just a different way of life. Especially Northern Minnesota, we were so isolated, and it’s just what’s normal to me, and I try to embody that blue-collar mentality especially and try to bring that to any team that I play on.”
Sabres.com: You also played football and baseball in high school, which position did you play that most correlates to goaltending?
Lyon: “I would say golf probably is the most similar, just because it’s so individualistic. Goalie is largely an individual sport wrapped in a team sport; it’s like being a pitcher or quarterback that way, but the mental side is so important.
“But I will say playing football especially taught me how to play sports with emotion. Football is a very emotional game. I think it really helped me to be to use emotion and enjoy playing with emotion and getting excited. I like that aspect. I like playing with emotion and passion. I think it’s really important.”
Sabres.com: You grew up on an island (on the Lake of the Woods in Minnesota) going to a one-room school with your sister until age 7. What was that experience like?
Lyon: “The story actually stretches further every time somebody writes about it.”
Sabres.com: What is the right story?
Lyon: “Well, my sister went there for a period of time. We left the island when I was six or seven, and I don’t really remember living on the island, but we lived on the island where there’s a resort. My parents manage a resort and you see stories – I’ll tell the story, and then all of a sudden, I’ll read the article, and they’ll be like, ‘They rowed [to school] in a splintery, wooden rowboat.’ That’s not what happened. We had electricity and normal human living conditions. I don’t really even remember that experience.
“My sister would probably remember it more. She’s five years older than me, but certainly a cool story to have, a unique way to grow up. I remember my parents were always doing stuff around the resort. I remember that part of my life a little bit, but we moved back to the mainland and lived a largely pretty normal existence, à la small town, as normal as I can.”